am I settling?
Three words- but a pretty fuckin loaded question, huh? Being a headstrong Aries, I’m mentally convinced the word “settle” doesn’t exist in my vocabulary. But when it comes to actual life, I find that things generally play out differently from what I imagine.
This time, exactly a year ago, it was the peak of quarantine. After a rough night of driving around my suburban Illinois hometown and crying to Lil Wayne- I proceeded to write one of my favorite blog posts ever: “How to Love.” I didn’t have a blog back then, so it was more of an unfiltered journal entry just for myself. However, somehow I got the balls to post it on the internet a few months later. And the most unexpected thing happened- my DMs and email inbox overflowed with others telling me that they felt the same way. Isn’t that wild?
Now a whole year later, back in my hometown, and a different soundtrack is playing: “Before He Cheats” by Carrie Underwood is blasting on full volume. And before you get worried- no, the lyrics are in no way relatable for me, but good god that song fucking SLAPS. So instead of bawling my eyes out while driving in the middle of the night like an emo little bitch- I’m screaming along at the top of my lungs in the afternoon, windows down, volume all the way up.
When it comes to the whole learning to understand my worth thing- I can’t say I’m fully 100% comfortable with myself yet. However, I’m definitely miles and miles further than where I was last year.
Okay, so what’s the problem?
Well, occasionally, a gal will find herself a little lost.
But let me back up and explain from the beginning.
I moved to New York 9 months ago without a single friend. I kid you not- I packed my bags and was convinced that I could just move here and make friends on the street. Dakota Johnson in How to be Single really made that shit look a thousand times easier than it actually is.
When the whole “find friends on the street” thing didn’t work, I decided to take a different approach to making friends. I started by finding friends of friends- spotting mutuals, DM’ing them on Instagram, and planning dinners. I’d generally have to make the effort the first few times, and eventually they’d started reciprocate and even introduce me to more of their friends. I quickly figured out the kind of friends I wanted in this new chapter, and made a conscious effort to keep them near. Before I knew it, random strangers became the closest thing I had to home in New York. And now, those random strangers are my family.
So- same thing with boys. Sometimes, going on a date was just a way of making a new friend. And because friends at that time were so far and few in between, the handful that I had made were so much more important to me. It still baffles me the way French Boy and I just dropped things so quickly. And what baffles me even more is that I felt absolutely no regret & never looked back. He knew me so well, could read my emotions better than anyone I’ve ever met, & genuinely cared about me. So where was the disconnect? I guess we’ll never know.
After him, I started seeing Pizza Boy a bit more. The funny thing is, I was planning to stop talking to Pizza Boy a long time ago- before he got too invested. I knew, off the bat, that things would never long term work out between us. However, at the same time, I’m 21 and it really doesn’t have to be that deep. So instead, I kept mentally repeating: “I’ll just keep him in my back pocket for a rainy day.”
Slowly us talking a few times a week turned to every day. Then every day turned into multiple times a day. And occasionally, just when I thought it was fizzling out- he would reach out and say the right thing at the right time. Almost like he read my damn mind. So before we were anything else (which we aren’t anything else), we were just really good friends.
Now that we’ve prefaced that- let me explain where my head’s at. There are two reasons to explain why I might just be settling for someone that isn’t right for me.
1.) the talking stage
In between school and work and everything in between, I don’t have enough hours in a day to subject myself to the torture that is known as: the talking stage.
I’m convinced it’s the reason that this boy that was “in my back pocket for a rainy day” has been more annoying than most.
At the moment, I’m not choosing him because I genuinely like him. I’m choosing him because I dread the idea of having to go through the very long talking phase with another guy-just to reach the same level of comfort that I am with him. It’s taken a whole 7 months of being in the “talking stage” with him to get where we are now. And frankly, I don’t have a single ounce of energy left in me to repeat the process with a whole different human being.
So every time, I hit a fork in the road where I can either go through the effort of pursuing something new or falling back to the boy in my back pocket. I always seem to choose the latter. And after choosing the latter so many times, something very interesting has started to happen.
My brain has somehow convinced itself to stop entertaining flirting with others- because I know I have someone to fall back on. My subconscious thought process goes like this:
See a cute boy while out
Think to myself “oh shit he’s cute”
Proceed to think: “He’s so cute, but where could this even go? Anyways, you already have a boy to hangout with so is it really worth the effort?”
Walk right past him without saying hi
I’ve always believed that the key to growing is being in a constant state of discomfort. It’s what keeps you on your toes. Get too comfortable, and you lose the motivation for tomorrow to be a better day than yesterday. It’s what happened with the “Blue Eyed Boy” that I wrote about in my last post. Every single time he tried to make an effort, I would somehow swerve my way out of it. And well, I think it happened one too many times, and he just got fed up with it.
So yeah, my brain’s become too caught up in the cycle of being ‘comfortable’ and I can’t seem to shake it off.
2.) finding a hug
The other reason is also equally as important, and one that makes me tear up a bit.
I’ve said this time and time again, but New York is a constant state of being alone in a crowd. You’re surrounded by people, but 99% of the time, being surrounded doesn’t mean you don’t feel cripplingly alone. During the first few months of living here, I would call my mom every other night and tear up as I would tell her “I just really need a hug, and there’s not a single person in this city of 1.5 million people that can give me a hug.”
And I don’t mean just any average hug-
I mean the kind of hug where you feel so comfortable in their arms that it feels like everything will be just okay no matter what’s happening in the world. The kind of hug, where you know that it means as much to them as it does to you. The kind of hug that makes you want to hold on for a really long time.
So when you FINALLY find a person that’ll give you that kinda hug- well, that’s a hard hug to let go of.
I think now it’s a matter of figuring out how much I’m willing to settle for something that’s imperfect- if it means I get to keep my hug.
