It’s Not You, It’s (Still) Me

We were sitting out on the patio of Stories Bookstore in Echo Park when she asked the question.

“Babe, are you waiting for me to break up with you?”

I twisted the plastic lid to let the steam escape my tea.

Franny and I had been dating for several months and were enjoying each other’s company. We had met at a bar that served craft beers and board games. I had complimented her smile only minutes from being introduced.

Sitting at the picnic table, her face obscured by harsh, porch lights behind her, I held my tongue before answering. How much had she uncovered? What did she know, and what was still an educated guess? I was falling for her, in part because of how slow we were moving. We weren’t exclusive, and in the moment, I think we somehow wished we were.

“Truthfully, I think so,” I started. Then, “Okay, you got me. You’ve picked up on it, haven’t you?”

She leaned towards me and raised her eyebrows a little. Then, placed her hand on top of mine, squeezed, and fell away.

Yes,” she said in a soft, feminine tone. “I’ve never experienced something like it. I just… don’t really know what to do with it, that’s all.”

In the few seconds it took Franny to grasp her mug and meet her lips, I wondered what had brought me here. Specifically, had others noticed? Was she the only woman who had cared enough to mention something?

“I don’t either,” I offered and turned away from the lights and swinging doors. Her face lingered, long after the evening ended. We kissed goodbye and I walked back to my apartment alone.

I acted much older when I was younger, and it was that decision, be it feigned or not, that drew Julie to me, the first girlfriend I ever had. The year was 2007, and I was living in Houston. We met at a Christmas party our parents threw in the neighborhood where we grew up.

At the time, I was working for an ESL company, but Julie was a missionary in Indonesia. She was home for a few months to see her family and raise funding before returning oversees.

Technically, I met Julie years prior. My first memory of her was on a St. Patrick’s Day in the late 80s when our parents took us to a park to celebrate. I ascended a small hill and came face to face with her. She pinched me because my shirt wasn’t green and ran off toward the swings and jungle gym.

We weren’t close as adolescents, but when I saw her that evening, we had both survived college. She was a woman now, her own entity. The house was filled with her extended family and she held court with all of them.

We were her subjects, her captive audience. She enthralled me and held me neatly in the palm of her hand.

When Julie returned to the mission field, I found myself thinking of her more than any woman I’d ever come across. I drove to work wondering what she was doing at that very moment across the globe. What was she learning? Who was she helping? Who, when it came down to it, was she seeing, and that’s the question that drove me back to my laptop hoping I wasn’t too late to interfere.

Eventually, I drew up the courage to compose an email to her. A few days later, she wrote back, Hey! and filled me in. Through the power of Google, we began sharing life updates that grew increasingly personal until a day in April, less than five months after Christmas, I told her I liked her. The truth slipped out. From thousands of miles, I still hit send.

Imagine my joy when I re-read the four, small words at the end of her reply: I like you, too. I went to bed ecstatic. For a brief moment, the universe shone her face in my direction.

We made our relationship official that summer, and the first people we told were our parents and Mark Zuckerberg. We emailed, messaged, and began speaking on the phone. Distance was involved, so taking it slow was essential. We’d only spent the holidays together and knew that didn’t account for daily life.

Still, something about those phone calls allowed us to quickly become exclusive. Remember a time before social media when crushes were sometimes unavailable? That was us, but across the Pacific. We arranged our schedule so that my evening became her morning.

And what a morning it was. There, from my studio apartment in Houston, pacing the kitchen, the remnants of a meal for one left soaking in the sink. Using a phone card with international minutes, the dial tone echoing. As the moon rose, I silently cursed my cell service while maneuvering closer to the window. On the tenth or twelfth ring, a soft click sounded, followed by static and the most mellifluous voice from ancient, submarine cables.

“Hey, Stephen,” and then a steady laugh like ocean wind. I’d catch my breath and use the moonlight to compose an answer.

As the weeks wore on, our conversations expanded past the hour mark into something that could not be contained by time zones, revealing themselves to be the harbinger of one, thinly-veiled question that, unlike my email to her, did not have preference in ownership.

“When can I see you?” I wondered, knowing I could not wait until December again.

“It would mean a lot to me to have you here,” she replied, and we settled on the fall.

Three months later, I flew East through Singapore until I landed in Jakarta. Julie met me at the baggage claim in blue jeans, sandals and a faded, yellow shirt. I embraced her as she walked the remaining steps toward me. We stayed in a hotel — in separate rooms — and walked the city each morning on our way to coffee and museums.

A few days after, we arrived to Sorong in the midst of a thunderstorm. Her house was wooden with peeling coats of paint. There were gardens on either side, and I went under the arch into the spare room she had prepared.

In the weeks that followed, I experienced her at her own pace, and it was more exquisite than I imagined. Driving motorbikes to the beach, and the fish market where her friends worked. Spending overcast days walking half a mile to the church. Meeting the pastor’s children, pronouncing new words and somehow, her teaching them to me with just the right amount of patience. In the evenings, we kissed while her roommate and the rest of the house lay sleeping. The rain fell beyond us. We embraced as water gathered outside the kitchen window.

On the night I left, I hoisted my luggage into the back of a cab, and she walked toward me, kissed me, but this time more fiercely. I remember her arms, their strength gripping my back.

I pressed myself against her. I shut the door and watched her disappear in a haze of dust and yellow light.

The next time I saw Julie was in Houston the following year. In February, I picked her up outside baggage claim in my grandmother’s Chrysler, and we drank coffee near our childhood homes.

That summer, when her father invited me to lunch, I told him I wasn’t sure why things had ended, only that the beginning of the end was that first stop after her arrival. Her smile vanished as we looked out over The Heights together. She finished her coffee. Her demeanor foreshadowed cracks in an abandoned pool.

Two years following, I was living in Kansas City when my parents called me one evening asking if I’d spoken to her. She had moved back home, met someone and become engaged.

I thanked them both and asked if they’d forward me the invitation. None came. I decided to move to California the following spring.

Almost ten years and ten thousand miles to the day, it never occurred to me until Franny’s question how much I might be holding on to Jules. Who knows how many dates, how many happy hours were paid for. No woman ever asked me if I was waiting for a shoe to drop.

There was Jenn who couldn’t believe I was single. Liesel, who I met by chance and developed feelings for. Adriana and Meredith. There weren’t many, but enough to notice. All of them had broken up with me so suddenly. Was it possible they did so because they sensed I had already decided they would?

If this was true, had I even been present for any relationship since Julie? Had I never moved on because of how quickly things evaporated? Was I frozen? Somehow, was I comparing every woman I met to her like Jimmy Stewart in Vertigo, shape-shifting them into who I desired them to be, who they should be, because who I was supposed to be with had vanished long ago?

Last year, after landing a new job, I felt stable enough to search for a new therapist. I had seen one in other cities, but not Los Angeles. I wanted to work with a woman and I began asking around, looking for someone that I could open up to about my past.

Someone who could help me unlock old patterns of relational intimacy. To explore why I was frightened and help me confront the belief that things would crash and burn.

My practitioner, a specialist in complex trauma, took time to explore Julie with me and dissect the decade-old memory of the day she returned to Houston. No detail was too small, for example, I had arrived to the airport with a bouquet of her favorite flowers. I also wondered, “Am I in love with her?” I asked myself this as she moved toward me from the curb.

During an exercise, I closed my eyes and recounted. There’s uncertainty on her face. And fear. I see her looking past me, straining. She appreciates how much I care about her, how we care about each other despite our limited time together.

I told her that before meeting Julie, I had never had a girlfriend and it wasn’t even close. I had wanted one in middle school, and as high school arrived, didn’t think I was cool enough. Adding to this, the girls who were interested chased me with such intensity I never pursued them. Julie was different, responsive, but self-assured. I was younger, but she respected me. She gave me space to be myself.

She cared about me. She loved me. She saw me for who I was and —

“Stephen,” my therapist interrupted. “Let’s give Julie a break here. You didn’t think you deserved someone, remember? You said so yourself. Take that in. What does it feel like? She was with you, but did you ever feel like she shouldn’t be?”

It was only then that I realized how long I had been carrying it, the self-sabotaging belief. Of not being worthy. Of not receiving someone’s attraction and desire.

If she liked me, how could I accept it? Even if she loved me, how could I possibly love her back?

Franny broke up with me three months after our conversation at the bookstore. Her mind was made up and I didn’t fight it. We had gone dancing of all things, and the date ended prematurely as I walked her to her car.

Soon it was Thanksgiving and Christmas. The year came to a close.

I lost myself in freelance work and when I looked up, the pandemic arrived. I was laid off, hired, then laid off again. My savings dwindled. The chronic injury I carried into 2020 worsened and I became shut-in and depressed.

In 2022, my therapist died after being hit by a car while walking her dog in Pasadena. She was fifty-six and healthy. I’ve struggled to find a good replacement in the years since her passing.

One of the last things she told me was, “You are deserving of love, Stephen. You’re good enough. You don’t have to earn it.” I’ve tried my best to remember, to embody the words. She saw something in me that I could not yet see myself.

Still, I remember Franny and the look she gave me and can’t help but feel afraid. I don’t feel worthy. I don’t trust a woman to stay with me because I don’t know why she’s there at all.

Two years ago, I retired from dating. It seems, like an unsent letter, I will bury myself with unspoken words.

This summer, driving across West Texas, I wondered what it would be like to make a trip out to Julie’s house. She lives somewhere north of Houston. She married a pastor and became a teacher. They have three children, two girls and a boy.

I’d heard my mother mention the oldest was named Hannah and it made me realize how much I liked that name. I wondered, Maybe I love it. I imagined, one day, having a Hannah of my own.

But then, the idea slipped away like loose branches in the wind. Like hurricane season, and I outran it. I got back to Los Angeles and picked up the routine of books, writing, and solitary life.

At night, I fall asleep drifting across the sea.

If this story resonated with you, please consider joining my Substack, The Twenty Year Life Project, where I blog about becoming a full-time writer.

You can also buy me a coffee here.

Thanks so much for reading.