*Please note that, although this was written several years ago, I only recently found the courage to edit, finalize, and share it.* ![]() Yesterday, I was dumped. It was a first for me. I’ve spent the majority of my dating life avoiding this situation. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had more than my fair share of emotionally unavailable douchebags—like The Drummer with his eight ball of cocaine or The YouTube Sensation with his clueless girlfriend. In fact, my quest for love has resulted in so many escapades that I could probably write a novel. Looking back on the flips, flops, and ghostings, it’s almost comical how many two-week romances and month-long flings I’ve accumulated. Take The Fox, with his picture-perfect, side-swooping hair, for example. After an enjoyable day hiking with our dogs, I found myself sipping a cocktail next to him at a local bar when he suddenly said he needed to go to the bathroom. He got up, walked over three or four seats, and plopped down next to a young, attractive blonde. I watched dumbfounded as he stuck his hand out and introduced himself. I didn’t laugh at the time, but I do now. This time, though, it was different. I truly liked The Philosopher. But I could feel it coming—his distancing, his pulling away. For weeks, maybe even over a month, he had been planning his exit, and my anxiety skyrocketed. It felt like I was balancing a load of insecurities on a telephone wire, barely making my next step but having no idea why I was carrying this burden. He did it in the hot tub. We’d gotten up early that morning, our heads aching from the bottle of wine we’d shared the night before. I slipped into the hot water, the ground around us thick with snow. I sat across from him, propping up my feet and letting my knees stick out of the steam like little mountaintops. Naked, I traced bubbles with my fingers as silence hung heavy between us. His head drooped, his expression sullen. I inched closer, rubbing his knees and making funny faces in hopes of lifting his spirits. “Why do you look so sad?” I asked. The silence thickened as I watched the wheels turn in his head. I prepared myself for the sentence he was so carefully crafting. “I think we should break up,” he said. The words fell out of his mouth like an avalanche tumbling down a mountain. Oddly, I wasn’t shocked. Tears didn’t immediately well up. I think I’d been unconsciously waiting for this moment. That weekend, he had made a trip home to see his family—a trip I’d joined him on twice before during our six-month dance—but this time, I wasn’t invited. Throughout the weekend, the voice of my college boyfriend echoed in my mind: “I hate Colorado. Everything was fine ‘til you went home to see your family.” After a year and a half, I broke up with him, my first real boyfriend. I’d used that trip to sort out my thoughts and prepare for the inevitable. I knew what The Philosopher was doing but didn’t want to believe it. I liked him. I thought he liked me. He took my hand as I sat up in the hot tub, suddenly very aware of my nakedness. I didn’t want him to see me—not all of me. He no longer deserved it. I dropped his touch and uncomfortably moved away. With nothing to say, I quietly stood up, grabbed a dingy white robe, and headed inside. I got dressed and began collecting my stuff. He had been letting me use his extra room as my studio, so I gathered tubes of paint and dropped them into a large white trash bag. From the window, I could see him with his head in his hands. I scanned each room for evidence of myself: the Dutch oven I’d brought to make chili, the stack of records we’d listened to together. Confused by our energy, my dog sat with him on the bed while he cried, and I loaded my car. He tried to hug me as I walked past him in the hall, but I didn’t want to feel his touch anymore. I shook off his fingers and collected my still-wet oil paintings. He lay back down as my worried dog tried to comfort the wrong person. The heartbreaker. Memories and red flags flooded my mind as I packed. I thought about the day he invited his ex-girlfriend and her child over to pick up a chair. The shock on her face when she walked in and saw me standing there. The excitement of her daughter as she hugged The Philosopher. It made me sick, essentially, when I learned he had done all the same trips with her that he had done with me. I spent the night crying with confusion and expressed my worries to him the next morning. He tried to assure me, but it only enhanced the insecurities that were building, ripping my confidence into shreds. He’d told me he was going through a string of short relationships because it takes six months to a year to get to know someone. But he hadn’t gotten to know me; he was still confusing me with his many ex-girlfriends and the similar events they had shared. The things that suddenly become glaringly obvious in the aftermath. It hurt to think about how he dismissed past relationships as unimportant. Now, I am unimportant. Just another girl. Nothing special. Someone to occupy his time until he got sick of me. A feeling I knew all too well because of The Yachty—a man who put me on the back burner while waiting for someone younger, fitter, and possibly with a more functioning uterus. That summer, I learned my cervical stenosis was severe, making it difficult to conceive. I felt broken. But The Philosopher didn’t want kids—he had 16 nieces and nephews. Now I realize he doesn’t know what he wants. He just enjoys the romance period at the beginning of a relationship. He’s a serial dater, and I fell into the trap. Two years ago, I ended the longest relationship I had ever had—three and a half years with The Captain. We had built a crumbling life together that I eventually completely knocked down. I ended it because I knew he never would, and we didn’t belong with each other anymore. It was probably the hardest thing I have ever had to do, but it was a rite of passage. And so is this. When I look back on my dating lifetime, all I have ever wanted was love. Endless, storybook love. But I was—and still am—very scared of it. In hindsight, I think I have purposely gone for the emotionally unavailable. Maybe because it was a challenge I wanted to win, or maybe because they gave me the freedom I crave. Maybe it’s as simple as I, too, am scared of commitment. In art school, I fell for a fellow painter. The Artist was adorable, just my type, but with a bit of pretty boy mixed in. I remember the night he abruptly left my house as if a fire was building in the kitchen, and he needed to get out quick. I was so confused. I thought things were going well; he seemed to like me. But he was just the beginning of this recurring element in my love life. A week later, another student was doing a project where she interviewed each of her classmates. She would pick a line or answer they gave, paint the quote on their bodies with water-based paint, and photograph the result. I was in the darkroom developing film when The Artist approached me. “I just got finished with my interview.” I looked up to see his smiling face as he lifted his black t-shirt, revealing his quote painted across his bare chest: “I should have warned her—I’m a narcissist.” I don’t know that I ever truly understood what he meant by that statement until now—until this moment and this experience. A person fending off their inner emptiness to make themselves feel special and in control, filling the void with another person in hopes of avoiding those feelings of defectiveness and insignificance. Is that what a serial dater does? And why am I so attracted to it? I always used to think I was unlucky in love. The man I lost my virginity to gave me the cancerous cells that resulted in my inability to produce. The string of men that followed him only filled a void I didn’t want to admit I had. The good ones, the kind ones, the ones who opened themselves to me—I ran from in fear of settling—never lasting more than a month before I would distance myself and make excuses for why they didn’t want to be with me. After I ended things with The Captain, I felt the need for a change of thought about the men I was choosing. A good friend told me to write down all the things I want in a man and carry it with me. He told me not to settle until that person checks all the boxes, every last one. ![]() I have not always followed my ideal man list in the last couple of years. I’ve let the loneliness I carry get the best of me. I tried to fix the unfixable recluse Sailor. I mentally deleted boxes to make the Yachty fit. And all the while, I was running away from the Bartender, with his arms wide open. For The Philosopher, I had removed the most important box of them all—the real freedom I crave most—to live on the sea. I had come home after two years of sailing around the Caribbean to be with my family. I didn’t know what my next step was, and I was trying so hard to make it be Colorado, my home nowhere near the ocean. Convincing myself I didn’t need it, pretending the saltwater didn’t run in my veins. He made it easier to fall into step among the pine trees and the cold, rocky breeze. I even tried to become a lake sailor, which I now know I hate. That experience made me realize I am a sailor because of the ocean, not because of the sails. Yesterday morning, The Philosopher sat before me, choosing to remain in his past as he pushed away his present. His eyes were red from crying as he told me he could never make me happy in the way I deserved. I put my bag down, knelt between his legs, took his face in my hands, and told him he was wrong. He had made me happy. At that moment, I let the tears surface, and I let him see me. I sobbed into his sweater, knowing there was still evidence I existed, residing next to his bathroom sink in the form of my discarded toothbrush. And then I collected my things and walked out of his life. I realize now why this rite of passage is so important. I didn’t leave him—he left me. It was the first time I truly developed a significant relationship with someone I cared very deeply for, but who would eventually leave me. The Philosopher was no different from The Artist, The Drummer or The Fox; he just came in a different package with the added bonus of some similar qualities to The Bartender or the young Poetry Professor I had a short romance with in college. But this time was different because this time, I let myself fall. I let myself become emotionally attached. I met his family, and he met mine. We shared many laughs and took trips together. We made memories. However, I also continually told myself I could be happily landlocked. I explored job options that would keep me here, ignoring my free-roaming gypsy spirit. And when the ocean came calling, I ignored that, too. So the sea did what it had to—and soaked into him. What happened is right—I know that now. He was an important character in my story, a lesson I needed to learn, the street that forced me to make a U-turn. Yesterday, I was dumped. I got into my cold truck parked outside his house, a thin layer of ice covering the exterior. My dog cried anxiously in the back seat as I turned off his street. I let my eyes fill with tears. I let myself think horrible thoughts. I let myself reminisce about the good parts and even more about the bad. And as I came over the hill, descending into my hometown, the tears stopped. I realized it was time to stop hibernating in the easy. It is time for me to see myself—all of myself. ✨Self-portrait images taken with a Canon 5D Mark II and a 50mm lens as I opened my eyes to the sun rising over the horizon, filling me with a sense of inspiration.
I barely moved from my bed, only reaching for my camera and tripod. Sitting in my unmade bed, still in the t-shirt I slept in, with no makeup and unbrushed hair, I captured the moment just as I was.✨
1 Comment
Georgia
1/29/2025 06:45:05 pm
What a beautiful and raw reflection on your journey. Your words and self-portrait capture the truth that so often gets lost in the noise of failed relationships and self-doubt: the ability to find your way back to yourself. I love how you’ve embraced this moment of clarity, with nothing but the simple authenticity of who you are in that moment. It’s a reminder that we can map our own path, and even when the world feels uncertain, we always have the adventure of self-discovery waiting for us. Your heart is resilient, and I can feel the strength in your words. Thank you for sharing this part of your journey — you’ve shown that no matter where we’ve been, we can always find our way home to ourselves.
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January 2025
Cassidy Wayant
North Carolina Heritage. Colorado Born. Aloha Spirit. |