The Magic of Validation
Whenever I’m asked how my partner and I met, I’m struck anew by the strange stars that had to align in order for us to find one another. We met on Bumble in Jacksonville, Florida in late 2016; in a sea of men posing with fish there was Hans, smiling at the base of Mount Fuji.
Jacksonville was a medial city for us both. I’d moved there on a whim after graduating from my master’s program in Ohio, and Hans was working at a media firm in order to save up money to move to Los Angeles. When we met, eight months into my life in Jacksonville, Hans expected to only have another six to seven months in Jacksonville and I had just gotten dumped. I’d made the classic mistake of clinging onto the first man who took me out on a date in the city, dove head first into a relationship and suffered the specific heartbreak of losing the one person who has become your new home’s identity.
I’d thought, at the time, that that relationship was huge. It felt adult in new ways, mostly because the guy’s apartment was clean and he had a bed frame instead of a mattress on the floor. After work I would drive to his apartment downtown and immediately strip my clothes off and get into one of his t-shirts. I’d walk around his apartment pants-less, always ready to fall headfirst into bed with him. When fissures started to make themselves visible in the relationship I ignored them. My friends tried to gently suggest slowing down, asking myself if this was really what I wanted. I was hellbent on making this relationship into THE relationship, a sinister motivation that I’d fallen victim to every other time I’d been in love.
He broke up with me in person, sitting on my couch in my apartment’s living room where we’d made out with Guinness breath for hours the week before. He placed my apartment key gently atop my kitchen counter and smiled at me before walking out my front door. His pupils were big and sorry, and I hated him for it.
I sobbed endlessly. I didn’t eat. It was the kind of heartbreak that brought infinite pain because it was a heartbreak I could have prevented. It felt embarrassing that I’d just moved, started a new life, and already that new life was over. Marred beyond repair.
All of this to say- I had absolutely no business being on Bumble again, let alone agreeing to a relationship that had an expiration date on it. But I wanted something different than the insane pain that came from these breakups, which never came from me and always came from men, their faces backing away from me with apology and a little bit of pity.
When Hans and I first met we became friends, the two of us stuck going on strange half-dates with another for months before the dates became real dates and we finally touched. I was hesitant, unsure, and Hans was too, knowing he’d be leaving for LA soon. After four months of knowing one another, after watching Moonlight and La La Land and endless movies together at the Tinseltown off of Baymeadows, after meeting for coffee three days a week at Bold Bean, the two of us finally admitted to being in a relationship. We played Breath of the Wild together for hours, stopping to smoke joints off my balcony and order food. I read him passages of Ulysses and practiced my presentations for the graduate English classes I was taking. During class he’d send me photoshopped images of James Joyce and I’d smile, burning to be in Hans’s bed.
Always, though, there was a cloud above us. Los Angeles, looming. He was scheduled to leave in June of 2017 and I realized I was in love with him in April of 2017. I felt split in two by my emotional landscape: on one hand I wanted desperately to implore the two of us to try making distance work, to give some romantic speech about how good we were together, how worth it we were. But on the other, weightier hand was that heartbreak that wasn’t even a year old. The embarrassment and the shame, all of those passionate speeches I’d given in the past for men I can’t imagine knowing now.
In May 2017 I went to China for my job, and Hans took care of Winston, my cat, at my apartment. The physical distance between us coupled with the time change made me spiral. I started fights or tried to seem cold so we could once again discuss the logistics of breaking up. It seemed at all times like I was trying to prepare for the pain while also rebelling as hard as I could against it.
I came home from China to Hans and Winston’s new relationship. They’d become obsessed with one another during my time away and this made it even more difficult to deny the want I had for this blossoming love to continue. I had fallen in love with Hans in April during my birthday camping trip and for all of May I tried hard not letting it show. But a few days after returning from China I let the words slip out of me. An accident. I love you water-falling out of my mouth like sparkly effervescent vomit.
Hans took my face between his hands in the wake of my word vomit and told me to go look on my fridge. While I’d been in China, starting shit just to hear him say he valued me, he also fretted over being in love. He arranged my fridge magnets and hidden a message for me behind a note I had taped up; it was a message intended to be seen after he’d left for Los Angeles, after we’d parted ways amicably, after our lives carried on however they were meant to. But instead the words came out of me of their own volition and his words were there, too. Validation as reciprocal love. Validation that maybe we could try, that maybe all the effort I’d given elsewhere was meant for this.
That’s not to say that after this declaration things were easy. They were, in fact, more difficult. I met his family with two weeks to go until Los Angeles. On the morning he left Jacksonville I stared at his packed car outside of my apartment and felt the unanswerable questions moving in light-speed in my brain. What would happen to us? I didn’t have an answer. I still don’t have an answer. But every day I give those three words to Hans and he gives them to me. Validation as antidote against the unknown.
I’ve taken an Instagram hiatus. It’s not a perfect hiatus because the stupid app is still on my phone since I have to check my work’s account regularly. And I’ve logged back in to my account twice. But I’m trying not to be too rigid with the way this Instagram hiatus works. I didn’t log off for mental health reasons, although the energy I have without the infinite scroll has improved my overall mood and holistic health. I find myself more able to commit to really trying in my pilates workouts, more present with my cats each time I pet them. I logged off mostly to give myself space and time to write, to live immersed inside of the book I’m trying to finish. And the hiatus has done that— enabled me to live more wholly inside of my work, my creative brain. I’ve done more staring at walls and thinking than I have in… years? My iPhone tells me my screen time is down over 60%, that I’ve spent an average of two hours on my phone every day. I feel less connected or concerned with the immediate stressors of people, friends and strangers.
This isn’t to say I’m a better person off of Instagram (lol). I miss the community I’ve cultivated on IG. I have FOMO, had a lot the first few days being offline. But I’m better able to account for time’s passing now that I literally watch the sun’s movement in the sky. Hours pass and I’m writing, thinking about writing. The time I spend figuring out the puzzle that is this book is beloved. I am thankful for it. It’s as if my work is validating me, acknowledging the commitment I’m trying to give. I’m trying to honor myself as a writer, and I can feel the work validating me. No idea when I’ll be back on or what my relationship to IG will look like once I am back. For now I’m lost in these pages, just as I wanted to be.
In a future newsletter I’ll write about Mad Men. I have a lot to say about the show, and about this rewatch Hans and I just did. We’re closing in on the final season and for now I’ll just say that Joan Holloway is one of the best television characters ever written. I could (AND WILL) write a thesis on this woman.
I gave my website a little bit of a makeover, complete with a new writerly headshot courtesy of Jenna Powers Photography. I’ll leave you with including some engagement photos Jenna also took.