A few years ago, my ex-boyfriend told me he wanted us to have kids, and I almost choked on my Szechuan noodles. “Not now, not now” I remember him clarifying as spice tears stung my eyes. “I was thinking in a couple of years.”
We had already separated twice over the past three years; he had proposed twice and disappeared afterwards twice, and I had taken him back — twice. And there he was, contemplating us having a family mostly because he thought we were “too hot to not pass the genes along to the next generation.”
In that moment I concluded that first, there was no worse reason to have a baby than hoping the little humans you pop out will be attractive; and second, when someone breaks up with you more than — let’s say, honestly — once after proposing, it’s hard to see them as a reliable partner, let alone a parent.
And yet, we still somehow sought the proximity and comfort of our past. After dramatic sagas of things not working out, we decided to meet up once in a while without the added pressure of a relationship, which landed us at a bustling Chinese restaurant by Union Square on a cold November night.
We had waited for 30 minutes, a not so terrible wait for New York, knowing we would order the same things as we had for the past month. Every thirty seconds, the hostess — who had the supernatural ability to simultaneously speak to patrons, delivery people, and whomever it was on the clunky black wireless phone — pointed her fingers at us and made tiny but rapid moves either to the left or to the right as waiters complained about us being in their way. When a seat finally opened on a row of tiny tables and we were to leave her alone, her tense forehead softened — until two strangers took our place, reminding her of the vicious cycle of the entrance.
Following the lead of our waiter, we pushed through a skinny aisle clogged by chunky coats and sat at a table separated from the next by mere inches. The whole setup resembled a big family dinner where no one knew each other but still wanted to know everything about each other. Certain that the unsolicited baby plans were heard by the table next to us, I felt obligated to let out a laugh to ease the candor of my response: “I would never have kids with you.” I followed up with another laugh.
“Just think about it,” he said.
Once the winter caved into spring and I caved in to love again — this time back to another old story that I was never able to seal off in my head — , I was sitting at the Amtrak station in Baltimore on a creaky wooden bench. I knew my sores would never heal if I insisted on opening them up over and over again, but at the age of 25, I did that to myself quite often.
My train back to New York got delayed for, I believe, an hour which was enough time for me to blame myself for not being courageous. I couldn’t even whisper the words “I love you” while all I wanted to do was to say them all the time. The three words never departed the tip of my tongue because what would have happened if I tore my heart open and the response was just a no?
Instead I sat at a gloomy train station and led out tiny sobs as strangers, who don’t know that a good public cry can work wonders, wondered what was wrong with me. After a gratifying few minutes of self-release, I pulled myself together and texted the man I loved something like “I’m glad we were able to catch up.” He stayed there, I trekked back to New York.
Letting people go is an art — and it’s one I haven’t mastered yet. Why some people shouldn’t be in my life anymore deeply resonates with me on an intellectual level. As most of the hypocrites I know, I myself have held friends’ hands and told them to simply “let go.” When it was time to swallow my own pill, however, my heart and my brain were like the two goats that arrive at a bridge from opposite sides. Neither moves, and I’m caught in the middle, playing memories in my head such as a simple moment of silence on a breezy May evening when we went back to college for a reunion. The night before the festivities began, we sat at the big lawn, all by ourselves. I rested my head on his shoulder and we didn’t even speak.
It took me years to have some sort of stability in my life mostly because of reasons out of my control — like opening my eyes for the first time at a hospital in Kadikoy, one of the biggest neighborhoods in the Asian side of Istanbul, instead of anywhere else in the world. But finally, two weeks before 2018 ended, I walked away from the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul with a piece of paper that approved my life in America. I left the fortified building at 8:30 a.m. in the morning, went home and took a long nap. The lump I felt in my throat for months disappeared right after, and I found the courage to ask the tough question: Do you love me?
“I don’t, Deniz, I don’t,” he said over the phone from seven-thousand miles away. I mumbled something I cannot even remember and hung up. Shame and heartbreak mixed with too many drinks at 3 a.m. infiltrated my body: Will I ever be loved? I had no answer and was on a downward spiral while trying to give directions to the taxi driver who probably got whiplash as I switched from one language to another.
Maybe there is something wrong with me, I thought. Please take a right before the mosque. Maybe I shouldn’t have dipped my fries into chocolate milkshake during one of our first dates but I had been dying to try that and the diner had both chocolate milkshake and fries. Is there something wrong with me? A condition undetectable to me but apparent to the men I am with?
We’ll go straight ahead for a few minutes. Maybe it is something I can fix, I told myself. Maybe, I can fix myself. In my head, I quickly laid myself on a surgical table. I dissected all my traits and characteristics right there; some good, some objectively bad. That’s my house on the left. Thank you.
In moments of self-doubt, I have found more answers than in moments of certainty. The more I reflected on myself, the more I was able to get to the core of what I think a relationship is, which is not always necessarily about the people who partake in it but about what’s between them; a connection, a chemical reaction, a link, whatever you may want to call it.
A notoriously disingenuous classic is “It’s not you, it’s me.” But it’s neither really. If months ago I were able to relieve myself of some of the burden I had placed on my shoulders for failing to be “the one,” I would have been able to see that it was not about me. As much as it has frustrated me, it wasn’t about the men who didn’t settle either.
Sometimes things just don’t work out between two people, and there is nothing I can do to “fix” it.
New York, February 2019
