157 Days Before the End

Rewind to a couple of weeks prior; my 22nd birthday was just right around the corner. After being stuck in a rut for a couple of months, I was in a good place. One of my best friends suggested I should look into finally dating again. The last time I’d tried was just before the rut. It was the first time I thought of seriously getting into a relationship again with someone new after ending things with my college boyfriend the year before (it was long term, and he also happened to be my first), but things didn’t work out. And so began the rut. I threw myself into my work, took on even more side projects to stay busy, and mostly kept to myself. It didn’t take long before I tired myself out. I woke up one morning and realized that I didn’t want to make up excuses anymore because the rut was precisely that: an excuse. I was running away. And I didn’t want to anymore.

I started going out again and enjoying so many things I’d forgotten I loved. I booked a trip out of town with my best friend to celebrate my birthday and didn’t hold out rewards for myself. I saw myself in a better light.

My friends would eventually float around the idea of dating again and would even try to set me up with people they knew from time to time, but I always brushed them off. “Not yet,” I’d say, for no particular reason. I just didn’t feel like it. That was until my birthday. I re-downloaded Bumble a few days before our big trip, just to scope out the dating pool. I’d matched with a couple of guys and talked to them casually. I kept my phone off for most of the trip and only had the chance to reply a handful of times until we headed back home.

I was never good with names, and keeping conversations going via text was never my strong suit. Eventually, this guy asked me out one afternoon — I mostly referred to him as that guy who went to the same university as me — and since my shift was ending earlier than I expected, I said yes since he was nearby anyway.

I’d learned that he was getting ready for his boards and was traveling back and forth to the city a lot because he’d been helping out his family in the province and that he was on the city council. We mostly exchanged stories — him about his friends, university, getting ready for boards, and me about my recent travels, going to concerts, and what I did for work. There’s one moment we still laugh about to this day.

“So, what do you do for a living?” He asked me.

“I write,” I replied.

“That sounds interesting. About what?”

“Architecture.”

He says he genuinely thought it was a pickup line because, well, he was an architect. For the record, by the way: It wasn’t a pickup line.

It was a good conversation. I remember thinking that it was a pity he wasn’t looking into seriously dating again. It was one of the first things we talked about when we matched, and I replied the same way because I just wanted to go with the flow and, for once, not overthink anything. Anyway, I operated that night thinking we’d never see one another again after that. And it was okay. He’d just be that one guy I went out with that one night over dinner, exchanged stories with, and never saw again.

At some point, we talked about why we were still single, to which we mostly had the same answer: for him, there was work, and he was traveling back and forth a lot, plus the added pressure of the boards. For me, it was working as well. I still had the side projects ongoing, and I was saving up for law school. I also went home during weekends to see my family. We just both couldn’t find it in us to try. And even when he did, it didn’t work. We were similar, in that sense.

When talking about past relationships, he was pretty open about his. I wasn’t. I wouldn’t say I liked talking about my ex. Not because I was bitter or in pain or anything like that — I just didn’t like talking about it because there was nothing left to discuss. I remember him specifically asking the story behind it just as this old Katy Perry song started playing on a nearby stereo(it was Thinking Of You). It was so cliched I still hate it. He let it go when I said there was nothing to tell. But that was probably the first time in a long time someone asked me just because. I’d often avoid the question during dates because, more often than not, people got intimidated by how long my and I were together, but it was nothing like that for him.

He asked me a lot of things, some I haven’t given much thought to and others, well, I haven’t been asked in a long time. He was genuinely interested. We ended the night walking around the city and holding hands. When I said I should get going, he waited with me until my ride came but not before asking me my last name. Being the /Millenial/ that I am, I gave him my Facebook.

I came home with a smile on my face and a text from him saying to take care. As I sat quietly on my way home, I opened up my messages to see my best friends asking how it went with this “mystery” person, and I told them it was all good. No further details because, again, I was under the assumption that it was probably the last time I’d see him again, anyway.

That was until the conversation somehow continued, and he wanted to see me again the next day and the day after that. You get the gist. We were both very transparent about our work situations and schedules, and given that he was commuting a lot and staying out of town for brief periods, he told me we were practically long distance. To me, though, it never felt like it. I’d always been the type of person who needs to have every detail of my life planned out, and when it came to dating, I always had a ton of rules for myself — and for once, I was letting all that go and just going with the flow. I think I can speak for both of us when I say that the most surprising thing about those early days was how easy everything was despite the setup, despite the schedules, despite despite. There was always somehow time to squeeze in a quick meal after work, quiet time spent together while he studied, and weekends just enjoying each other’s company.

And then I got sick. No, not with Covid. The pandemic was still more or less a hundred days away. He came as soon as possible after my shift and looked after me. It was odd. The last time I’d gotten sick before that was just earlier that year after a beach trip with my friends. It was the first time I ever got sick as an actual adult, aka the first time without my mom to look after me. I had no one but myself, so skipping to that moment right there with this person constantly checking my temperature, changing out my washcloth, and all that was an odd but welcome change. He taught me random phrases from their local language back at home and recalled funny stories from his university days and childhood. It was probably the first time in a long while that I thought I wouldn’t mind having something like that again in my life. Eventually, he’d meet my parents and my best friends, and I’d meet his. He’d come with me one weekend to visit my hometown and see where I grew up and meet everyone else I love, and we penciled in a weekend in our schedules for me to make the trip to his province. One of my grandmothers, who generally approached strangers (particularly her grandkids’ suitors) with a healthy amount of initial distrust and dislike surprisingly liked him. He reminded her of a boy she once loved (and whom she often talked about). God rest her soul.

A virus was discovered in the middle of all this — together with him passing his boards, me applying for law school, more random dates. I will probably never forget the moment the World Health Organization announced that what we know now as the coronavirus was now a pandemic: we’d been in the middle of our usual evening calls (he always called when we couldn’t see each other for the day). I’d check my phone from time to time to see random news reports of the first trickle of positive cases. The pandemic was announced by the three or four-hour mark of our call.

The conversation then shifted to how and when I’ll be heading for home because the city didn’t seem like the best place to be for me (I am immunocompromised and did not have nearby family around where I was living at the time), so I immediately packed a bag and left two days later. That was the last time I’d ever be in that old apartment, and I didn’t even know it then.

This detail surprises many people, but since then, we have not missed one call at night. I could count on one hand the number of times we haven’t allowed even a few minutes of our time at night via a call to ask each other how the other’s day went ever since the pandemic hit (and one of those instances was because of an act of god). It wasn’t until the pandemic hit did I feel the distance, but whenever we both gave it thought, like those early days, it had given us more reasons to stay proactive when it came to our relationship. When restrictions finally became less stringent, he made the trip here again, and I, in turn, made the trip there just a couple of weeks back — seven hours between us.

We’ve been together ever since that October night. I often think of the circumstances that led me there — all the mishaps, wrong turns, and inexplicable heartache. I wouldn’t change a thing. All’s well that ends well, indeed.

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Previously Published on medium

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