the cure

“You seem a lot better.” My sister tells me. I spent the afternoon with my headphones on, tidying the kitchen in her sunlit filled loft and cutting up tomatoes, cucumbers, fresh mint and dill for a fattoush salad.

“I feel it. I think I just needed to feel like myself again. I don’t have to pack or perform, or think about being somewhere else. I think I just needed to feel like I can just be me.”

-

Reader, I’ll tell you about the past week and a half. It has consisted with me packing up a year and a half’s worth of belongings - and dividing suitcases and boxes and tote bags into 3 separate apartments. I had a little over a week until my new lease (yay!) started and really was committing to being in one apartment with one man for this eight day period.

I’ll be brief in my explanation - I’ve never loved writing about my casual dating life - and it’s not something I do often. Jesse is Jesse, because Jesse has and will always mean something. MFB meant something because I was a regular at his bar. The men in Italy were the men in Italy - I risked nothing by writing about them because it felt like a fairy tale / soap opera, anyway.

But I’ve been casually dating more. Casual as in - a cute Hinge date here and there. Nothing moves past the first date, which is kind of how I like it. I’m retraining my nervous system to be comfortable with receiving, and am trying to reconfigure my brain to believe that there are men who follow through on their word.

And (as I always believe) fate and the universe have it - a very cute man happened to slide into my DM’s about a month ago. We did the usual love language - story likes back and forth until one day I woke up from a nap to him asking what I was up to and me asking him if he wanted to go for a coffee.

An afternoon coffee turned into an instant crush, and by 5 pm he was in my apartment with a bottle of wine. The physical chemistry, dare I say, rivalled me and Jesse’s - but I would never let him know this. I could never let him know this.

“I know it’s early in…” he trails off before finishing his sentence. “But if you need a place to stay in between leases, you could always stay with me.”

I didn’t know how serious he was, but I’m trying to re-learn. I’m trying to re-train. So I smiled and said, “Okay” and was shocked when he messaged me goodnight and asked when he could see me again.

Reader, I am learning that I am hard to read. Which is ironic because I pride myself in nothing but telling the truth and nothing but writing the truth. But with men, I always feel like I am playing chess. I am weary and I am calculated and I know all the right things to say to ensure they’ll have a good time (just ask them a million and one questions about themselves) - because I never know their true intentions. And by doing this, I realize that I never really know mine.

I never took his follow ups in seeing me that seriously. I think it was my intuition telling me that this situation was going to lead into the more physical route, so I kept my expectations light. I posted to my stories that I needed a place to stay from May 22nd to June 1st, and within a minute of posting that - he messaged me with a “Hi roommate.”

I squealed. I threw my phone somewhere and squealed some more, then immediately went on Close Friends and gave them the update.

Here’s the thing: I could have somehow finessed an Airbnb. I could have divided up my time at different friend’s houses. I could have figured out something - but that something wasn’t as enticing as sleeping over at this cute man from TikTok’s apartment for a week.

Regular sex = check

Cute coffee shop dates = check

Cute Toronto summer walks = check

Check. Check. Check. He didn’t have to be my husband, but it was the promise of something new that was exciting.

On my final day of my lease, my friend sends me off in an Uber to his place. 3 suitcases (-1 that he came to pick up the night before) and 3 tote bags. I left a box of girly pop trinkets and a vase to babysit on her kitchen table.

“Why do I feel like I’m Carrie and you’re Big closing the cab door?” I tell her as I slide into the leather seats as she waves outside the car’s window. We’re laughing. It’s a bittersweet goodbye, and I always marvel at how me and her met through my newsletter whilst I was in my Rome era, and then realized we both live on the same floor of the same building when I came back to Toronto.

“Went upstairs and immediately burst into tears.” She texts me. I feel a mixture of both heaviness and gratitude as the Uber drives me out of the area.

-

Upon arrival, I immediately take myself out for dinner. I can’t remember the last time I sat in a corner spot and ordered a glass of wine and margarita pizza (thank you to my tax refund) without flinching, and I realize this is all cause for celebration. He texts me that he isn’t going to be around until later, so I enjoy my time alone. I like that he does his own thing, and I like that I do mine.

He comes home around 1 in the morning. I’ve taken an everything shower, and am half asleep when he walks into his room.

“Hi.” He says.

“Hi.” I sleepily reply.

It’s immediate. It’s instant. And I don’t have to close my eyes and pretend he’s someone else to enjoy it. I fall asleep in his arms. I never get too hot, or too uncomfortable, or feel like I need to get up and sleep on the couch. In fact, it shocks me at how quickly I felt at home in his apartment. How clean it was, how boy it was. There was a can of Lysol on the counter, which made me smile because I knew the effort he took to cleaning it before I arrived.

His alarm goes off at 6 in the morning. He tells me his friend is picking him up and they’re going somewhere for soccer - he’s vague and seems detached and I don’t press. I tell him I’m going to work in a few hours.

“See ya.” He says.

“Bye.” I reply. I turn over and fall back asleep.

It’s pouring rain before my shift, and I make my way over to an Italian bakery. I sit with the nonni at the counter and pretend I’m back in Santa Margarita Ligure with my cappuccino and cornetto. I always feel like this breakfast order impresses the Italians who work at the Toronto bakeries. It is the standard Italian breakfast - nothing more. Nothing less.

I go to work. I give the girls an update. Everyone is a mix of intrigued, invested, but also weary.

“Has he asked you to hang out or go for coffee?”

“No. He doesn’t even know where I work. I haven’t told him and he hasn’t asked.”

I get home in the evening. There’s a pit in my stomach. He texted me at 2 to ask where I was, I told him I’m at work. He didn’t respond, and a few hours later, he starts posting that he’s out at a concert.

I do my usual routine. An everything shower. A face mask. I make fish and a cucumber and avocado salad for dinner. My anxiety is spiking so I double my dose of L-Theanine. It’s a mixture of wanting more, not knowing how to articulate it, and feeling stupid for asking. I really just wanted to go for coffee with him.

He stumbles in at 2 AM.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

He climbs into bed.

“I’m drunk. We shouldn’t hook up.”

I start laughing. “Ok.”

A few hours later, I feel some sort of relief of him pulling me in closer towards him. We had been sleeping apart, and his arms felt like reprieve.

“You’re like…my little sex toy.”

My back immediately straightens. And I am transported back to Rome, where I’m having a conversation with a friend about a similar situation: “They think that it’s a compliment, to have someone to want to sleep with you. But it’s hard for them to understand the emotional implications of feeling like an object.”

“That’s objectifying.” I respond to him.

“So I shouldn’t have said that?”

He’s drunk. I need to remind myself of this.

“I’m falling asleep.” I mumble.

In the morning, we have sex. I then decide to take one of his jackets. Fortunately for me, he has a great wardrobe. “I’m wearing this today.” It’s a vintage forest green bomber. He’s hungover on the couch and doesn’t put up a fight.

“See ya!”

I close the door, pick up a cappuccino and cornetto at my new favourite bakery, and then promptly burst into tears on the streetcar. I then burst into tears at work while retelling the story. The girls get it. It’s a day for chips and gummies and a make-up application from my friend.

“You need to get out of there.” The girly pops agree. It’s a unanimous decision.

He’s not home (again), when I get home - so I treat myself to two dirty martinis. I decide to barely eat all day (besides chips and gummies) so that the alcohol will hit me, and I hope to be very numb by the time he gets back. My tax refund went to good use this week.

I pull out my laptop and start writing.

Dear Jesse,

Do you ever feel like you just…failed?

I google “can you mix L-Theanine with alchohol?” It’s advised not to. My anti anxiety supplement intake will have to wait until my martini tipsiness subsides.

I am broke, and I feel trapped. I want more than this, than all of this - but I can’t communicate that. I’ve never felt like I could communicate that, because I don’t believe these men have the capacity to give me what I want. To give me what I supposedly deserve, but have so many conflicting doubts on what I do believe I deserve versus what I take. When a man that I went on a date with a few months ago told me that I could call him, I looked at him like he had 3 heads. Call you? Why would I call you?

And it’s not this man’s fault. He’s not solely responsible for the way I see the world. The way I view things, the way I feel things. He’s here and he’s there, he’s a mirror.

Close to midnight, he walks through the door. I’m sitting beside my packed suitcases. I’m in my Fendi glasses. My hair is in a top knot. I’m in sweats.

“Hey.” He looks sleepy and confused.

“Hi. Can I talk to you about something?”

I seat myself cross legged across from him.

To Be Continued