So, feel free to ignore the next few pages if that makes you feel better. It's not like they meant anything in the large scheme of things that is my life. No. That's not true. It does mean a lot. It's a sample of the things I do when I follow the well-regarded 'Don't think about it and it'll go away' mantra. Although, whoever came up with that mantra needs a slap in the face.
I dated Ellen Dumont during what would be my whole stay in New York. Spoiler alert, right? Well, the thing is I'm not hiding it because it's not worth it. Eventually, I had to leave. Eventually, the nice careless vacation Ellen represented would get old, or stop being a vacation and become yet another relationship that I have to deal with. I hadn't dealt with my own, actual, very real relationship, I was not about to put another one on top of that. And I might be careless, impulsive, and extremely dumb, but I'm not that dumb.
Ellen felt the same way. At least, for the longest time, I thought she did.
We had a good time. I can't deny that. She was fun, interesting, exciting, adventurous. No two days were exactly the same with her which made me continuously feel like she kept me guessing. Kinda like a TV show.
If right now it sounds like I got bored of it, you have no idea how quickly. You see, remember when I said getting to know yourself was overrated? The reason is, we are hardly ever who we think, or who we wish we were. And once we figure that out who we are we have two options, we either accept who we are, or we struggle to change it. Ellen was the result of me choosing the latter.
If it sounds like I've given this too much thought, I understand your frustration, trust me. But Ellen is something that marked me. Something that marked us, both her and me. I'm trying to process it, so I'm sorry if I'm been repetitive.
But I guess I'm rambling again instead of just jumping right in so let's get going.
I slept with Ellen the day of her art opening. I'm not gonna say much more about that. Two days later she took me to this expensive restaurant where everyone knew her. She had a table where she always sat at, and the waiter already knew what she meant when she said, "I'll have the usual."
When she turned to me, I felt like asking for the menu would be ruining things, so instead, I asked her, "What do you recommend?"
Ellen didn't reply to me. Instead, she looked up at the waiter and said, "She'll have the Korean Chicken Bao."
"Three or five?" The waiter asked.
"Five."
The waiter wrote it down and left us alone for a moment. We were sitting in a booth next to one another, so she had her hand on my thigh when she said, "I hope you like it."
"I've never had Bao before."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I mean, don't get me wrong. I know what they are, I just guess my wife and I never..." I stopped myself, licked my lips, and looked at Ellen's face. Her right brow had risen to give her face a puzzled expression. "Oh... I probably should've said this a lot sooner. I'm married. I wasn't trying to keep it from you I just-"
"Nah, that's fine. I'm okay with being someone's little secret."
I laughed. "Except you're not. We separated a while ago. We're not together. See?" I said showing her my left hand. "No ring."
"What happened?"
I had a sip of water and replied, "I don't want to talk about it."
"She cheated?"
"You really want to spend our time together talking about my wife?"
"Since you still refer to her as 'your wife', I think she's still very present."
"Well she is, legally, again, do you really want to waste our time talking about her?"
"Of course I do. I want to know everything about this mysterious woman that you clearly still carry a torch for."
That took me a bit by surprise. I hadn't mentioned her to Ellen once before that and she was already making conclusions.
"Excuse me?"
"What?"
"What makes you think I still have a thing for her?"
"You don't?"
"Of course not."
"Okay, then let's talk about her."
"Why would I want to spend my time with an attractive, intelligent woman, talking about someone that doesn't matter anymore?"
"Using my ego against me? Well played. But she does matter. To you at least," I opened my mouth to oppose but she said, "But fine! You're right. We shouldn't waste our time talking about that. What do you want to talk about?"
"Where were you born? What was your childhood like in France?"
She laughed, had a sip of water, and asked, "You wanna go straight into the personal stuff, huh? Fine. I was born in Fontainebleau. It's a small town outside Paris. Paris is unapologetically expensive, so must families that work there don't actually live there. My mom took the train every morning and every night. It was convenient but It also meant I spent a lot of time alone after I came home from school right in town.
"Did you have a lot of friends?"
She grinned. "Do I look like the kind of person who had a lot of friends?"
"Yes."
"Well, I wasn't, I was a huge geek and people didn't like me. So my mom got me to sign up for art lessons, and here we are."
"What about your dad?"
"They got a divorce when I was little. He remarried, and I grew up pretty much without him."
"Sorry about that."
"It's fine. Okay, your turn. Where were you born, how was your childhood?"
The waiter arrived and placed the dishes in front of us. I used that as an excuse no to answer the question, and for a while, it worked. We enjoyed lunch, talked about how great the food was and how addicted I now was to Baos. After lunch, we walked through Central Park. Ellen felt comfortable enough to hold my hand, and I felt comfortable enough to let her. It was nice, warm even.
After we had walked around for a while, I told her I needed to go home to get some work done. Instead, she said work could wait and I needed to try this place she wanted to show me. I refused at first, but then she added a limousine and champagne and I'm just not that expensive.
Looking back, I can very clearly see it. The ways in which we were so bad for each other.
Ellen and I connected in every worse way possible. I don't know if it's ever happened to you. Someone you feel this intense connection with because they are every single thing you've never allowed yourself to be. Ellen was impulsive, spent money just like she earned it, and every chance she had to try something different she'd never tried before, she'd take it. She removed a lot of self-imposed shackles, which gave me a sense of freedom I hadn't felt in my entire life.
But here's the thing; I'm about to say something that no one else will tell you: Freedom can be toxic. Yes, you heard me.
The thing is, too much freedom can easily become its own prison. Just think about this for a moment. What restaurant would you rather eat at? A restaurant that only has ten dishes or a restaurant that has eighty. At some point, the amount of choices and options becomes overwhelming, and sometimes, when someone takes away our ability to choose, what they are actually doing, is freeing us from the burden of having to choose.
That's what marriage is. A prison, a wonderful, magnificent prison. You give away so much of your freedom in exchange for not having to go on a first date again. Not having to wake up alone again. Having someone to make your meals, having someone to cook for. Having someone who would die for you, and someone you'd die for. I'm sorry but if you don't find a sense of pleasure in making soup for your partner when they have the flu, you should never get married.
It's a prison. It's a list of responsibilities that you decide to willingly carry with you. And there is a lot of fulfilment in those responsibilities. But at that moment, I felt used, disregarded, disposed of. So I wasn't looking for someone to share all the good things about relationships. I was looking for someone to share all the bad things inside me.
The impulsiveness, the overindulgence, the wrath. Ellen was exactly that.
The next few months, I barely slept because I kept having to juggle our partying and drinking and other not so nice things with work. I remember days happened so fast I almost forgot my own birthday.