For nearly all of my life, I felt like I was cursed when it came to love. The harsh reality is when it came to me and my father our love seemed to be rooted under what i would deem as  transactional. I am only as good as the number of accomplishments I can rack up on his little checklist. Basically, if love were a sport, I was running suicides for his approval and never winning a damn medal.

Me and my mother for the longest our love that felt like Stockholm Syndrome. She loved me because society has taught women they’re “broken” if they don’t love their child. And I loved her because… well, she’s my mom. But for most of my life it felt like we were just two people off the street, who wouldn’t even look twice at each other. Picture us passing at Target: no smile, no nod, not even a cart bump. Just silence.

So when it came to dating, I never really cared for it. I was burned out from performing 18 years for my dad’s violently underwhelming approval and damn sure had no desire to embody simply being “tolerated” like my mother tolerated me. (Talk about generational curses, am I right?)

I never had a problem being alone, until I did.

My last relationship started exactly 3 months and 2 days after my cousin’s murder. Those 3 months and 2 days? Black hole. Couldn’t tell you a single thing. My life was one long soundless black and white movie on repeat. Work. Bed rotting. Blacking out. Repeat. And of course, friends and family were calling me “entitled” and “selfish” like I was supposed to show up to brunch carrying balloons that said, Yay grief! Sis, I could barely get myself in the shower without a pep talk and a Red Bull.

Then I met a man. And for the first time in forever, I felt something instead of nothing.

He was fun. Hell, we were fun. Our first date? I was so excited I literally got sick. Like, lost my voice, coughing, NyQuil on the nightstand sick. (Yes, my immune system quit on me after one dinner date. My body said, “This is too much joy. Shut it down.”) But I was high off him. I spent 4 out of every 7 days with him. He was going through life changes straight out of a “lottery winner” commercial, while I was scribbling “reasons not to lose my mind” lists in the Notes app.

But I knew something was up. People told me I was “crazy” and “looking for problems,” but listen the gift of someone raised to perform for love is that I can smell another performance from a mile away. And baby, he was giving me Leonardo DiCaprio Shutter Island. I could practically hear the Oscars music. So I broke it off in October.

The first breakup was… horrific. All I remember is bleaching my hair, losing 13 pounds in a month, and calling my mom a see-you-next-Tuesday at a beer pub in our tiny hometown. (If trauma was a sport, I was doing the triathlon.) People kept telling me how good I looked and how much fun I seemed to be having, when in reality, I felt like I was screaming in a room full of sleeping people. Spoiler: no one woke up.

So after some months passed and he asked for the 100th time to try again, of course I said yes. Because apparently, I love a bad idea wrapped in déjà vu.

But it’s true, the sequel is never as good as the original. And this wasn’t even a Frozen 2 situation.

He wasn’t a bad guy. Honestly, he was the first person to love me even when I was handing out nothing but hate and disgust like Halloween candy. But this time around? The jokes that once made me laugh pissed me off. The invites that once made me blush now made me sigh and start drafting excuses in my head. Every time I looked at him, all I could see was how good of an actor he was. And the more I tolerated him, the more I started to hate myself.

The pivotal moment came when he bought me a second Chanel after I made it very clear I didn’t like the first one. (Yes, I rejected Chanel. Yes, I know people would sell their kidneys for it. No, I did not care.) We were arguing in the hallway, him bragging about the price and the “status,” and I just chucked the dainty little bag at his chest mid sentence and screamed, “F**k you.” His apology? Adding me as an authorized user on his Amex. Nothing says “I’m sorry” like boosting your credit score.

Sounds dreamy, right? Chanel bags, Amex cards, bills covered. But here’s the thing: I wasn’t living. I was performing. Just like I had been since I was a kid. And I knew if I stayed, I’d get stuck in that role forever.

So I left. Over the phone. On a Wednesday. (And I hate Wednesdays. Truly nothing good happens on that day. Cancel them like MySpace.)

This breakup felt different. I wasn’t distraught. I wasn’t missing him. I was missing me. I cried every day, not because I lost him, but because I had no idea who I was anymore. I’d created this fake character to fit into his world, and realizing that was humiliating.

So I opened my old high school Google account and found my old assignments. I discovered I loved reading before the world made me do it for AR points. So I marched to the library like it was Coachella and checked out 12 poetry books.

That same weekend, I read 17 of them. Seventeen. (The librarians thought I was either brilliant or completely unhinged. Possibly both.)

And in that heartbreak haze, I realized losing yourself in someone else isn’t just me it’s universal. Everyone does it at some point.

Between grieving the fact that there would be no third go-around and trying to rebuild myself from scratch, I realized nostalgia can be chased but never recreated. But you can create new highs, new memories, and new connections.

So, as one does and as I always do, I went out looking for a distraction.

And that’s when I met my f**king match. Stay tuned.