Five Summers Ago

What falling in love after loss feels like, and why the nerves were worth it.

This week is five years since my first date with my partner. I’ve been thinking a lot about the moment I saw him walking towards me, his arms swinging casually by his side, body language I now know to be trepidation, masked by trying to act a little nonchalant and goofy. I remember thinking he looked so cool, so calm, so collected. I still know him to be all these things. He truly is the coolest cucumber, a perfect pairing for a very frenetic Freya. But it makes me smile to recognise how nervous he must’ve been that day. We met on hinge then messaged for a while (he was out the city, then I was out the city) so there was a lot of build-up. We were both nervous. Both knew it could be something good.

Would we fancy each other? Would we look like our pictures? Would we find one another funny when we didn’t have time to craft a response over text? Isn’t it a mad and beautiful thing that the person who knows me best in the whole world, didn’t know me at all just five summers ago.

I wrote about falling in love with Jem in my memoir, The Tidal Year and I feel so grateful to have something that narrates that time. Someone in my family had questioned whether this was a good idea. They’d said, how will you feel if you break up and your book is caught up in this love story, rather than what it was supposed to be about: grief.

But to me… the two always felt the same. It wasn’t just a book about loss but all the ways loss transforms your life. Falling in love being one of them. I struggled with feeling joy at that time. I struggled with knowing that whoever I ended up with would never meet Tom. I wasn’t sure I could truly be known someone who didn’t know him. I struggled presenting a version of myself on dates that was carefree (surely if a woman is to be one thing on a date it’s: carefree). Not to mention handling early date chat: how many siblings do you have?

I feel pleased I was brave and wrote about all this, and hope I would still feel the same even if we hadn’t ended up together. It was a very true depiction of my life at the time. And that was the important thing.

I recently had an exchange with a friend about her dating. We were treading familiar territory that I remember from my own single days. An overwhelming feeling of: isn’t this supposed to be more fun? Am I the problem that I’m finding it so hard?

At times, I felt on top of the world. Sexy and unstoppable. Other times I felt worthless. I resented the big ugly emotions when I felt in competition with other women. I began to develop ‘a bit’ about various parts of my life. I replaced being tender with being glib. It took me a while to feel I didn’t have to perform some flattened version of myself and I think that’s actually a big part of why I fell in love with Jem. He put me at ease. He was interested in really getting to know me.

He also came across as self-assured in a quiet, unassuming kind of way and I admired that. I wanted to be like that. There was one time I said: you’re handsome. And he replied: I know. I remember being surprised by this. Did people really like themselves? Looking back, I wonder whether this was him trying something new. Maybe he thought if he said the words, they would feel true. Maybe if he showed this self-appreciation, I would mirror it too. Falling in love, I think, was a process for both of us learning to love ourselves by way of demonstrating how we would like to be treated. I admire how we mutually showed up to that shared space with a commitment to ask for better.

Maybe there are some people out there who are self-assured enough that they don’t find dating nausea-inducing (who are these people??) whereas I personally buckled under the pressure to be COOL, always CHILL and in THE MOMENT. I felt this pressure so keenly that in an attempt to be The Coolest I ‘spread my bets’ and dated other people thinking that I could trick my brain into not being so obsessed with Jem. I worried whether he felt the same as me and whether he was seeing other people. But was scared to ask incase he was and we needed to end our relationship. I wasn’t ready to not see him again. When we finally had that discussion, he was like: oh, I assumed that’s what this is. Oh, Freya!

In those early days, a friend had said to me: what if you waste these first few months being worried, rather than having fun? I felt that so keenly. What if I was ruining what was supposed to be the most romantic chapter of our love story, because I couldn’t just give in to it?

But I do believe that modern dating is not designed to be good for the soul. Our nuanced personalities are reduced to a few pictures and pithy lines. We date multiple people, treating each other like busses arriving one after another. Hop on, hop off. We start and end things with a text. We block. We delete. And however good our intentions are to bypass all this by joining a running club, it’s difficult. It’s really, really difficult. So, I think maybe you would have to be mentally ill to find this process normal?? Like, truly it is ok to be in despair and not find dating ‘fun’ however great the fella is.

I write this to say that… I feel so grateful to be on this side. I feel safe and happy and there’s still so much excitement for the future! All while feeling so close to when he walked towards me in Burgess Park five Junes ago. I’m experiencing the honeymoon phase my friend mentioned. It’s the time to enjoy it.

If you’re single, it’s ok to find it stressful. It’s a normal human response to putting yourself out there. You are brave. Love is worth taking a chance on, every time.