As I sit in the pitch-black darkness of my room, my face illuminated by my laptop screen and the bad romance movie I’m watching, I find myself wondering, when did it get so complicated? It seemed so easy in movies, boy meets girl, boy falls in love, some happenstance that doesn’t allow them to be together, happenstance gets resolved, and everyone lives happily ever after. That’s not the way it is in real life.

In typical modern dating fashion, I’ve cycled through dating apps regularly. It stopped being for the sake of finding a partner, and rather a game of validation. I would receive hundreds of likes in a matter of minutes, but after a day or so of rapid likes, the algorithm drowned my profile into the pool of potential candidates. I no longer received a disproportionate level of likes and I found myself deleting the dating apps yet again. This painful cycle has continued for years.

I had so many potential suitors that if I said no to one, I would still have plenty to choose from. I found faults in every profile even when the faults weren’t real. Bad haircut? Nope. Group photo? Next. Unflattering angle? Pass. The abundance of choice became overwhelming, and I started living in a romantic fallacy. I believed I would see the guy on my screen and know he was perfect for me; he was always one swipe away. But that one swipe away followed with each swipe. Faces became a blur and the ambivalence towards the images on my screen grew.

My friends knew I was a cynic towards online dating. But their optimism and determination to the illogical faults I found in my candidates were strong enough to change my mind. That was how I met him.

He had been freshly rejected from medical school for the third time and was seeking validation in every way he could. We had matched early in the evening and didn’t stop talking to each other until the sun rose. The hours of conversation, endless jokes, and intimate stories created a flourishing bond between us that I believed to be a budding relationship. Except it wasn’t.

He had been completely transparent with me from the beginning. He was a broken man who had no capacity for a significant other. I was nothing but a temporary life jacket as he rode the waves of rejection. Our fun had an expiration date. Still, I found myself drawn to him, living in the delusion that I could be his happily ever after.

We texted nonstop for three blissful days. I learned about his traumas and comforted him as he winced at the pain that these topics brought. He needed a staycation to temporarily numb the world around him and wanted me as a part of it. He asked if I wanted to spend two nights in a hotel with him. I knew what this meant, and it wasn’t within the norm for me, but it felt right. With a click of the confirmation button on the hotel booking website, I was locked into a non-refundable agreement with a man I had known for less than seventy-two hours.

I checked into the hotel, hands shaking from the anxiety of meeting this familiar stranger. As I sat on the bed of the hotel room, under the thick pillowy duvet that couldn’t maintain my warmth, I felt my heart thumping between my ears. This was either going to be a memory that I would treasure, or I was about to become a Netflix documentary.

Knock knock.

That was it. My fate was sealed. I opened the door and in front of me stood a man with playful eyes and a mischievous smile that invited danger. Any wavering in me had evaporated and my heart grew ten times in size.

In the arctic winds that wreaked havoc on our city, I was safely wrapped in the embrace of a man that finally made me feel warm.

In the days that followed, we discussed what we wanted and concluded that we would be exclusive friends with benefits. We’d stay on dating apps and if we found something better, we would walk out of each other’s lives. On a sliding scale of being single and being in a relationship, I had no idea where we fell. I was single, but I was also exclusive with a man that didn’t want the title or responsibilities of a relationship.  This wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted a relationship with him. To be there for him when he was struggling, to give him all of my affection, and to be able to share the baggage that he carried. Why was I good enough to hook up with, but not good enough to date?

He fulfilled my needs. He made me feel cared for, made me laugh, and encouraged open communication, why would I want to keep looking? How did I end up in this situationship? I muffled these thoughts so that they were no longer screaming in the front, but rather whispering in the back.

I kept telling myself, no expectations meant no disappointment. He stated without any uncertainties that we would never be an item, so I couldn’t expect that from him. I couldn’t be mad at someone who was so clear with their words.

The day after the hotel, I woke up to a good morning text from him. And the same thing the day after that, and the day after that. He told me he did it because he knew I liked good morning and goodnight texts (and it’s true, I do). When we were out in the crowds, his hand would find mine and they interlocked as if I was the missing piece in his puzzle called life. His longing gaze held my eyes and I saw all the love he had but couldn’t afford to give because he couldn’t even afford to love himself.

This man had dedicated his whole life to helping others and was gatekept by a flawed system that had no mercy for the less privileged. His exhaustion stemmed from his soul and the armour he wore to face the world was falling apart. Revelling in his Japanese heritage, I seemingly started to practice kintsugi, the art of repairing with gold. Every day since I met him, I milled my heart of gold and mixed it with the lacquer of love to fill the cracks in his armour.

The whispers in the back of my mind that told me I wasn’t good enough started to change. Murmurs of his interests began to fill my ears. Maybe he had let his walls down and even though he knew he was broken, he saw that I was willing to fill the cracks.

I became the lighthouse that helped him weather the storm. The emotional labour of supporting him weighed heavy on me. He always told let go of him if I couldn’t carry it anymore, but I knew I wouldn’t do that. In return, his touch never seemed to leave mine. In the car, his hand rested on my thigh, his thumb gently rubbing left and right. Instinctively, I would interlace my hand with his; In the corner of my eye, I saw that same mischievous smile spread across his face. Sometimes, when I sang along to the music in the car, he would reach over and turn the volume up because he knew I liked the song. Standing next to each other, his hand found its way onto the small of my back. Resting there to make sure I felt protected and to make it easier for him to pull me close for a kiss on the head. He was the calm that washed over me during the nights that felt endless.

Eventually, he was no longer drowning in a sea of misery. He had made it onto sturdy land while I remained his discarded life jacket washed up along the shore. I watched his footsteps disappear in the sand as he made his journey into his fourth attempt at medical school. Though I was happy for him, it was a hollow victory. The endless texts became polite replies. The only remnant of his touch was the residual warmth that soon faded as well. 

His cracks became my scars. While he was beautifully mended, I was left with harsh reminders of yet another infatuated man who was never my happily ever after.

I sat in the coffee shop with my thumb hovering above the send button of a text that read: “Hey, I know you have some things that you need to work out, but at some point down the line if you want a relationship with me, I’m not opposed to it.”

My thumb must have hovered for ten minutes before I tapped send. Immediately I muted the chat and slammed my phone onto the table in anticipation of his reply. After an eternity of silence, I took a deep breath and checked my messages.

“Thanks.”

All hope was extinguished by a courteous response. We didn’t talk much for the rest of that day. We didn’t talk much at all after that. 

No expectations should have meant no disappointment, yet I found myself running my fingers along the scars to taste the bittersweet moments that left them. 

Our whirlwind romance taught me many lessons, but the most important one was that damage could be beautiful as well. I started to paint the scars with gold to preserve the memories but also to remind myself that even though we didn’t end up together, I could revere what could have been.