Forever Alone | Chapter 5: Highlands & High Expectations (Part 2)
In which I encounter a hot Scottish man on a train, zero in on a future mother-in-law, break up with the Universe, and finally drag myself to therapy.
I published Forever Alone: One Introverted Millennial’s Half-Agonizing, Half-Hopeful Journey Through Singledom in 2021 as a 7-part podcast miniseries. I’m re-publishing it here on Substack for the first time in written form! Start reading from the beginning here.
I’ve always been pretty decent at having hope—as good at that, at least, as I am at being sad and doubtful, which I’m also very good at.
Over the years, I hoped a lot. When I walked back and forth from the courthouse during the year I worked at a law office, I hoped I’d run into a cute young lawyer. When I was out at a friend’s birthday party, I hoped someone would single me out from across the room. I hoped that I’d meet a guy who was into personal development when I attended my first weekend of coach training. I hoped something would come of me joining Match, both in the U.S. and the U.K. I hoped that Jake from True Food or Josh the roof guy or the hot Scottish businessman on the train would turn out to be what I’d been looking for. Year after year, countless signs and so many opportunities for fate to strike, and nothing ever happened.
And over the years, in the dark spaces between those strung up little hope lights, I was plenty miserable, too. I remember so many hard, silent sobs. On some days, for no reason and yet, every reason, I felt so desolately lonely—like every wish I had was being sent into a silent, dark void. Like the Universe was completely indifferent to my existence and my pain.
Having a friend in Kristen—more of a companion, really—throughout all of that didn’t make me hate singledom less; but it was less lonely when someone else was in the same boat, and when we could turn our attention to other things for long stretches of time.
But early in 2018, right after Kristen and I bought our tickets to Austria and Scotland, she met someone. The summer before, maybe inspired by all of the admin work she’d been doing for me, she decided to set up her own online dating profile. She’d been on a few first dates here and there, but nothing had progressed beyond that. This time, though, she met someone who she was excited about—someone who seemed to value and respect her, unlike most of the guys she’d dated (and I’d hated) in the past.
At first, I held out hope that Kristen having a boyfriend was good news for me. After all, she and I had always been in the same boat—what happened for her almost always happened for me, too, and vice versa. Like the time we both got our very first coaching clients on the same day, completely unrelated to each other. Or that night we saw our respective paramours for the last time—me, when Stephen broke up with me, and her, the final time she saw Cocky McDoucheFace before he ghosted her. She and I were a unit, and for the past 7 years the Universe had treated us as such. This just meant I had to sit back and wait my turn—difficult, because I’m incredibly impatient, but not impossible.
The tunnel had gotten dark and scary a few times in those intervening six months, as I started to worry that maybe what happened for her wasn’t guaranteed for me, but our trip was a warm light in the distance—the culmination of years of support and encouragement from the Universe. Yes, there was doubt, but I was willing to trust that my story was still unfolding. I just needed to be in the right place and allow the magic to unfold.
But then … no magic unfolded. Not in Scotland, and not after I came back. And I had no way of knowing, until I lost it, just how much of a difference a shared experience can make. For many years Kristen and I had both doubted whether we’d ever find the right people for us. We’d been unhappy to be alone, but we’d been alone together. When she left our little boat, I was utterly alone; and in isolation the weight of my doubt and fear grew tenfold.
One by one, the lights in the tunnel were snuffed out, until I couldn’t see anything in front of me but vast nothingness.
It’s difficult to describe how life feels when you’ve completely lost hope and faith. For many, many months, I wasn’t much more than a zombie. At best, I functioned on autopilot. I woke up, took care of my dog, ate, showered, did my job—yes, somehow, even in the midst of the worst depression of my life, I still managed to coach people; what choice did I have if I wanted to earn money? Without a job, or a dog, or a roommate—things that kept me accountable and forced me to stay semi-functional—I fear it might have gotten much worse. And it was plenty bad enough. I cycled between numbness, despondency, wracking sobs, and absolute fury. It was rare that I went a day without crying. Plenty of times, I sat on the floor, staring into space, unable to imagine how anything would ever change, and equally unable to imagine what would happen if it didn’t.
I felt … betrayed and abandoned. Not by Kristen—though it would be a lie to say I never had a moment where I felt that way—but by the Universe, itself. I’d started out, six years earlier, a skeptical, uncertain, anxious person, and had slowly, over time, built a sense of faith and trust in something bigger than myself. I’d spent years bettering myself—taking responsibility for the fears and beliefs that had warped my point of view, and uprooting them. On faith alone I’d taken risks, gone outside my comfort zone, and had really, truly believed that I was on the right path—that I’d been actively receiving confirmation that I was going to get exactly what I wanted. Why else would I have created an online dating profile, had friends chase men down in restaurants, or gone to Scotland if I didn’t believe I was being led to something—or, someone? For nothing to come of all of that meant that the foundation upon which I’d built my entire life was false.
I painted myself into an inescapable, Nihilistic corner. I concluded there were only two possibilities: Either none of it had meant anything, which therefore meant that life, itself, was pretty damn pointless, OR, maybe it had meant something, but there was something wrong with me that prevented me from getting what I wanted. That felt more likely, because it would explain why people who’d been in the same exact boat as me, like Kristen—literally getting the same coach training, doing the same personal development work, starting the same business, joining the same online dating sites, living in the same goddamn house—could get an incredibly different result. Because unlike me, there was nothing wrong with her.
The cherry on top of my Nihilistic sundae was the fact that I knew I was screwing myself over by being so bleak, and I still couldn’t stop it. I’d learned enough about the laws of the Universe to understand that you always get what you’re a match to. And if you’re sitting around feeling despondent and hopeless, you’re about as far away as you can get from what you really desire. That, of course, made me feel worse, which drove me deeper into shame and hopelessness, which made me even further away from what I wanted … and thus the cycle continued.
Living with Kristen during all of this didn’t help, for so many reasons. I told a friend that it felt equivalent to forcing someone struggling with infertility to share a house with a pregnant woman. It might not be the pregnant person’s fault that the other woman is struggling, but the constant, inescapable reminder that it’s easy for some people to get what you want—for no reason you can make sense of—feels unnecessarily cruel. I didn’t feel like I could talk about how much I was struggling, because I didn’t want her to think it was her fault. And, I wasn’t sure I wanted to process it with her, anyway. She would have sympathy for how alone I felt, of course, but she couldn’t deeply empathize, and the reminder that someone who used to be able to relate to you on every level can’t anymore was its own kind of pain and isolation.
So, instead, I opened up to other friends. My friend, Nina, in particular, was a constant source of empathy and patience. She’d been through a devastating breakup around the same time I slipped into depression, so we held hands, so to speak, from different parts of the world.
After months of checking in almost every day, usually over text but at least once a week over the phone, too, she finally said to me, “You know, I think you might be depressed. Do you want me to share my therapist’s info with you?”
Even then, I still didn’t quite believe that I was depressed. I’d always thought depression was something that didn’t make sense—sadness for no reason; a chemical imbalance that some people just randomly have. There’d never been a time in my life where I couldn’t point to the exact reason I was sad, and this time was no different.
I didn’t exactly push back on Nina’s suggestion, but I wasn’t sure, either. In my bleak state, I thought … what’s the point? I’m sad because I don’t have what I want—may very well live the rest of my life not having what I want. A therapist can’t change that.
But Nina was both kind, and persistent: “Maybe she can’t give you what you want, but maybe it’s also not necessary to feel this way, day in and day out, regardless of whether you have what you want. What do you have to lose?”
So, after 8 miserable months in a tunnel devoid of light, I decided to give therapy another shot.
This was Chapter 5: Part 2 of Forever Alone. Read on for Chapter 5: Part 3!