This Is The Difficult Part About Making It Past The Beginning Phase Of A Relationship

Our beginnings are always the same.

Boy meets girl, girl meets boy. Judgements are made upon one another. This person is a new and majestic being with a universe inside them. We are eager to stretch out our fingers to this new world; a world of unknown, of secrets, of rough surfaces and jagged edges, but also of dancing comets and cosmic space lullabies. We introduce and explore.

We explore their Seven Wonders and their California earthquakes. We mentally snapshot their New Jersey beach sunsets. The preconceived notion of them falls apart. The new idea of them starts to form in our heads piece by piece—filling in the spaces of the fallen idealized with the new. The beginning is always fun and exciting—the tension, the attraction, the getting to know each other.

Time passes. You two have met up a couple times, and somehow it’s the middle now. An unprecedented amount of time passes and it’s somehow labeled as a “good amount of time” you two have been talking. The middle is fun too, but not like the beginning. The beginning holds daydreams, constant wondering, and thrilling uncertainty.

Our middles diverge.

In the middle you think you have a better projection of where this is going to go. In the middle, you think, “Wow, I really like this person.” In the middle is stardust shimmering on your face, romantic late night drives with sweaty clasped hands, catching then throwing sunsets, soft spoken pillow talks, dilating pupils, sex.

But the middle is also the crazy. You are insensible—seeing only the things you want to see and believing only what you want to believe. You are tired and in a constant frenzy. He made you that way and you don’t know what to think.

You didn’t know your middle was his end.

The canceling of plans. The unresponded texts. The unmistakeable look that you brushed away like debris. No—he can’t be this selfish. He can’t rip away your precious middle. You can’t let go of the beautifully crafted moments that poets write about. So you keep the middle going for as long as you can, even though he’s already gone. The end already happened for him. It’s your turn—but my god—this middle is a sweet drug, and letting go means the beginning of the comedown.

The middle is fleeting, slowly. In time he doesn’t call. Him ignoring you means you desperately texting him late at night to meet up. You call him to meet up because you’re bored and lonely, because the chaos of your daily life isn’t distracting you. You spiral into an insatiable neurosis. There are no books, no movies, no gatherings that could stop this painful desire hammering inside your head. The subconscious desire to be validated by him. The constant questioning—to know exactly why he ghosted you. To know what moment in the middle constituted the end for him.

You’re trying to live in the middle. But the middle is growing impatient and its hospitality is no longer welcoming. The middle has all your feelings and moments packed up into suitcases. The middle even gave you bus fare.

It’s time, it whispers.

Are you ready to gently let go? Are you finally ready for the end?