dad was wrong (again)

It was 1974 and my mum and dad were living next door to one another, completely oblivious that the other existed. My dad was eleven, soaring through primary school and mum was four, only just beginning. It wasn't a love story yet though.

"Tell me how you met mum," I would always ask my dad.

"We lived next door to each other, how many times do you need to know?" He would always reply.

"No, tell me how you really met".

Ultimately the story was always the same, but it never got boring. It had everything a good story always had; jealousy, drama, awkwardness, and of course, love.

It was a story I could never get enough of; always going back to, always re-playing the same scenes, always imagining that this is what it had to be like. Someday, someone would like the way I dressed and the way I carried myself. We would walk over to each other's houses, ringing the bell and smiling on response. Sometimes we would make mud pies in the cubby house. Sometimes we would ride our bikes down the street. Sometimes we would dress up in princess gowns and suits and sing along to Kylie Minogue on the grass - you know, the usual.

I used to love imagining mum and dad doing all of these things together. And then I used to love imagining me and some mystery boy doing all of these things together. It made me excited. Excited for the feeling I believed every eleven-year-old was bound to feel according to Dad.

In primary school, I loved to date. HAHA.

I moved from boyfriend to boyfriend, changing my Facebook relationship status from single to in a relationship to it's complicated and back to single all in the frame of a week. I sulked when it was over, but moved on quickly, not willing to miss my opportunity for love before I turned twelve.

Moving into high school, I was convinced that every boy I liked, would also like me back. This theory had a successful track record in the past so of course, it was going to work. It wasn't until the first boy I ever liked in year 8 rarely acknowledged my existence, that I took note to shred any physical evidence that such a theory ever existed in the world. I was embarrassed that I was thirteen and single. I'm sure Dad would be so disappointed.

I transitioned into my fourteen-year-old self, slightly more mature, and even more ready to find myself a future husband. It really couldn't have come at a better time either. After wasting a year, this would be the one. The one that I met my year 9 boyfriend. And my year 9 boyfriend really was just that; my year 9 boyfriend. But at the time, woah! was he so much more. I don't love any of my old boyfriends anymore, obviously. I'm not sure I ever did, and i'm not sure if at the time I thought that I did. What keeps me from cowering and sounding borderline ridiculous when recounting these stories over a cup of tea and a piece of beautifully buttered banana bread though is simply the idea that I had learnt to take something away from this relationship.

I wouldn't be starting from scratch, but from experience in my next relationship.

We broke up, as most year 9 couples do. They never said hi to me at school the next day, and I didn't even know if I wanted him to - despite the split being mutual and us confidently confirming that we would definitely be friends. I spent the next month sad and ashamed, stomaching nothing but mac and cheese and caught up in a cartoonish heartbreak. Yes, I cried when it was over, but I soon channelled my inner feelings of sadness and shame about disappointing dad for the fourth year in a row and determined that the next time I was swept off my feet, it would be a more life-changing kind of situation.

Each time, when dad was recounting his story and I was listening intently, chin resting in hand and heart fluttering, the whole situation seemed so easy. Love, that is. We would be living in the same suburb and running with the same crowd, eventually being introduced to each other and falling in love. However, it was proving to never be that easy, at least from the experiences that I had encountered so far.

So far, I had picked my first boyfriend by playing 'eenie meenie miny mo' between him and another 5th grader. We never talked. That lasted 3 days.

So far, my second boyfriend was the infamous stud who enjoyed calling me bossy and refused to hold my hand. That lasted a few weeks.

So far, my third boyfriend's name I had painted on the inside of my dresser and immediately crossed out after I stopped liking him for no reason. I think he got a hair cut. That lasted about a month.

And so far, my fourth boyfriend? Well, you're up to date with that one. That lasted six months.

After him, I was a little exhausted, actually no scrap that, completely exhausted with boys. I believed that I had worn out all options, and tried absolutely everything. Maybe it was me, no.. no, that couldn't be it... hmm, could it? Was I really too bossy? Did I suck at making conversation? Was my hair not parted the right way? (well yes that was true but I didn't know that at the time).

Around this time I struggled with insomnia. Maybe because I was swallowing litres of instant coffee before and after school each day and was wondering to myself what I was still doing up at 3 am watching cake-making tutorials - not maybe, definitely that.

After seeing 3 am strike the clock every night, I would routinely lay there thinking. I tried to fill the empty void with thoughts about boy - who my next victim was going to be more precisely. Was he right in front of me all along I remember thinking? Or was he on the other side of the world currently involved with some other 9th grader and attending an elite French boarding school?

I had always considered myself lucky in the department of love. But it was around this time I started to become furious that maybe I wasn't as lucky as I had thought.

"Oh," anyone would say over a cup of tea and a piece of beautifully buttered banana bread. "Don't you worry about it, you'll probably just end up being that really cool aunt who is rich and travels anywhere with no kids, so cool!"

Snarky.

I would try my best to dismiss such comments. But it continued to nag at me, creeping in during the nightly moments of watching my 5th cake tutorial. What was it about this comment that I couldn't understand, and how could I start to understand it? How could it possibly be 'cool' to be the single rich aunt? Who the heck would be happy to wind up alone?

It was amidst this crisis that I met my next boyfriend.

I had known him for two years prior; my first memory of him being that he would call me interesting names in the class and later that year, proceeded to label his final Design piece after me to really show his commitment. His sense of humour was unlike anyone else's I had ever come across and I was completely infatuated. Why had I not noticed him before? I would always wonder, who was this curly-headed cutie?

In my life, I've had precisely one moment when I've felt cool. This was that moment. He called my name from across the classroom. I told him to 'leave me alone', snickering under a laugh. He picked up his laptop and floated towards my seat, thrusting the laptop in front of mine. I immediately gasped. At the top of the document was the title of his piece - my name. He clicked save and we exchanged a glance.

We started to message the following year. My messages were long and overwrought, trying to demonstrate to him how intellectual and humorous I was with my political jokes. His were brief but interesting, and I could read both nothing and everything into them. We maintained this virtual version of friendship until we pronounced that we both liked each other. What followed was six months of what I thought was a successful lead-up to a relationship.

But long story short, I was once again back to stomaching nothing but mac and cheese.

Now, this one hurt. If I was writing this then, I would have polished the whole story for you - told you how young and misunderstood we both were and how he was just scared of making the greatest decision of his life - haha. I would have laughed awkwardly as I described to my friends that it just wasn't meant to be. It was just a pit stop on the road to meeting that person, just like Dad had met Mum.

But I fell into that pit stop. Got so caught up in the idea that this pit stop was fixing all those empty voids. I finally could fall asleep without watching cake-making tutorials until 3 in the morning.

I had to learn quickly and harshly about heartbreak. Of course, I was absolutely desolate. My friends tried everything at the time, but I was an inconsolable mess. Nothing was okay and it seemed that nothing was ever going to be again. I furiously re-blogged heartbreaking quotes to my Tumblr feed and went to the extent of linking my Tumblr in my Instagram bio in an attempt for him to understand how distraught (and overdramatic) I was whilst subconsciously hoping he would want me back from all of this.

Eventually, like with most failed flings, I just began to forget. It took time of course (and a lot of Love Myself by Hailee Steinfeld), but with time, the blame began to shift from me for not being good enough, to him for not seeing me as good enough. I was officially angry, tearing to sheds the small personal tokens we had traded and deleting all of the photos from my iPod we had shared. Yes, I was angry. But I learnt a lot from an experience like this.

I learnt how to love myself.

And I know it's not that easy. You don't just wake up one day completely infatuated with yourself and willing to stick your finger up to anyone else who thinks otherwise. But when that morning comes around, wow is it a good morning.

You have to get through those nasty mornings first to come out appreciative on the other side. It's a natural process. You can't expect to grow back your finger after chopping it off the previous day. It's got to take time and thought and energy to stitch that finger back on, or if it's too late, learn to live without it.

Most of my dad's theories eventually turned out to be wrong, and all are fairly ridiculous. I'm not going to go bald because he is starting to go bald. No matter how many carrots I eat, I will never be able to see in the dark. But most importantly, I definitely wasn't destined to find love EXACTLY as he and Mum had in the 80s.

2015 was both the best and worst year. I had my first-ever heartbreak, yes, but I also developed my first-ever love for myself. I talked a lot about this stage of my life in a previous blog post 'downtime before it becomes deeply suspicious', so I won't go into detail. But basically, I learnt to love being alone, in my own company, and without a boy determining my happiness.

I recounted in that post that I realised how much I wasn't ready to let go of making my own decisions. That having a partner, in some way, before we're ready to have one, prevents us from learning to enjoy our own company before we have to enjoy being in others.

"It's a huge loss really though, that we as a society, police the idea of being alone when in reality, it is everyone who is missing out on what it feels like to live in their body and accept themselves enough to greet themselves, tell themselves goodnight and that they enjoyed spending time with themselves today"

I remember feeling so revitalised and motivated to preach how wonderful it was to be single. Because for once in my life, I had never felt more comfortable and in love with the person I was. I skated through two of the hardest years of my schooling without a boyfriend and I was truly grateful.

I would often say to anyone who chose to listen that you can't expect to love another person without loving yourself first.

Accept your body before you accept theirs.

Accept your habit of sneaking two donuts before bed before you accept their weird habits.

Accept the way you pronounce LEGO before you accept their flaws.

I do believe this is why I suffered my heartbreak as bad as I did. I was so against myself, always blaming myself for not being right when it was never my fault. I wasn't confident enough in myself to support my decisions and to not feel guilty when they weren't supported back. I wasn't able to stand my ground, instead following suit in whatever way I deemed most likely to seem most desirable to him.

Fast forward to today, the 29th of December 2018, and I am quite happy.

You might be thinking, how did a girl so obsessed with being by herself get into a relationship?

Well, exactly that. I loved who I was. I loved the values I practiced and the morals I preached. I knew what I wanted in life and exactly how to get it. So of course it was easy to love someone else. To love the values they practiced and the morals they preached. To support what they wanted in life and help them to reach it.

My whole life I've heard many people say that you can't find happiness in the same place that you lost it. But the truth is, after the majority of the sadness, resentment and anger had passed, it was easy to realise, that something, a little twinge of happiness, never really passed. I'm not a believer in soulmates, and neither is he. But we believe that if you're both dedicated, invested and willing to confront the shitty stuff when it appears, then there is no reason to say that it couldn't work out.

I always understood that my individual happiness is inside of me. I never lost that. Everything else that happens, including that situation, whether it be pleasant or unpleasant, is just an addition. Because I have everything that I need.

I've always been responsible for my happiness. My partner has always been responsible for his happiness. Of course, we also go out of our way to pick each other up when we're having a down moment, but we don't spend our relationship trying to complete one another. We focus on our own individual things to make us feel good in our lives and focus on things to appreciate in each other.

You're going about it the wrong way if you're attempting to find someone to bring you YOUR happiness.

I know i'm still young and my relationship isn't perfect. You don't have to listen to me give you advice about your relationship, because what works for one couple, might not work for another.

Just understand that you don't need someone else to make you happier. But know when you've found the right one to support that happiness.

,ally (wishing you clear skin and happiness!!!).