Going Around In Circles

I have so much to tell you, I don’t even know where to start. So let’s start with this: my railcard has expired.

After renewing it just before my thirtieth birthday, squeezing out every last drop of discount, I am now faced with full-priced train fares. (What am I, Lincoln, a 31-year-old full-fare adult?) As such, when I’m without Astrid, I’ve been getting the coach. It is unfathomable to me that National Express doesn’t allow dogs, but that’s for another day.  Astrid barely counts; she smells amazing and fits in my handbag.

Anyway, I have been getting the coach, as I was saying, because once again I find myself back in Cheltenham, where I moved at the beginning of this year. Just as I did exactly a year ago. History repeats itself. In my case, London spits me out in accordance with the Gregorian calendar.

This time, my London lodgings, which were kinda too-good-to-be-true, came to an end when the company I was working with changed hands. I had to move out. No bother. I was holding my breath the whole time I was there anyway, because my rent was subsidised in exchange for content, which felt like a trick. But I got to spend a lovely stretch of time there and enjoy living on my own with Astrid in the city that I love. All’s well that ends well.

So, when I was told I had to leave, I assessed my options. I’m not earning what I used to, when I could almost comfortably afford living alone, so trying to do that again felt reckless. I knew Cheltenham was an option, but I had also just gotten back with my ex. I wagered that this wasn't a good enough reason to move back in with him, and it was also too soon. This is how I ended up spending so much time on the M4.

Look, we are living in a hetero-pessimistic, boyfriends-are-embarrassing, incel-laden, patriarchal nightmare. Culturally, there’s probably never been a worse time to announce boyfriend recycling. I was worried about going back, let alone telling anyone. Not because I don’t, unequivocally, after much scrutiny, believe that my ex, now re-boyfriended partner, is the love of my life. Embarrassingly, that is the conclusion I have come to, and we will come back to that. I was wary because I would be the first person to tell you not to get back with your ex. Because I’m stubborn. And because it is, as outlined in Chante Joseph’s now seminal Vogue piece, undeniably, a little humiliating to keep announcing boyfriends, break-ups, and make-ups. Plus, even with the calmness of my nervous system, the approval of friends and family, and all the other markers we use to reassure ourselves we’re not dating walking red flags disguised as human flesh, we could still break up again. Of course we could. 

I have thought about, written about, and intellectualised love since I first discovered the concept. As I have gotten older, I have consoled and given advice, solicited and unsolicited, to strangers and friends alike. I have made judgements, assumptions, and calculations about relationships that I am not in, experienced bad relationships, terrible ones, quite-lovely-but-not-quite-right ones, and OMG-THIS-IS-IT-omg-no-it’s-absolutely-not-fml-oops ones. Through all of this, I came away with some fairly rigid rules for myself. One of them being: never, ever go back. There is nothing good for you there. You left for a reason. Go fishing.

My very first Substack, in fact, was all about this, about walking away. The relationship I walked away from is the very same one I have ended up back in. I walked along that wriggling, wiggly path I spoke of and ended up in a clearing, just a woman standing in front of a man, asking each other if we should give it another go.

Maybe my path was a circle, or an incredibly inefficient athletics track, idk. All I know is I was walking forwards the whole time, leaving all sorts behind me, treading on the rotting figs from my own proverbial tree, before I found one that looked ripe and fresh. It turns out I had already bitten into this sweet, sticky flesh before, but it tasted different this time. That is to say, as I do keep saying, I’ve changed.

I wrote about this in my last Substack. There’s no avoiding it if I am going to diarise like this. I keep on changing. It’s delightful. It’s a relief. It’s also scary. Changing requires acknowledging the truth of who you are, which is sometimes too terrifying a concept, so instead you carry on stagnant, indignant, covered in algae, without room to breathe.

Look, I am not perfect, but I am better than before. Or worse. Maybe you’d like me less, now. That’s up to you, don’t tell me!

So, what changed? Well, lots. After we broke up, we went no contact on and off for months. I was better at it than he was, mostly because he wasn’t very good at it, which made it easy for me. I felt triumphant and gratified. It gave me a good excuse to accuse him of boundary crossing and cement my decision as the more evolved party who mustn’t go back. I was adhering to the rules. I am a modern woman who employs therapy speak and therapy action.

One, two, skip a few. He got unwell, pretty badly unwell, so we spoke again. I went to see him in the hospital, and suddenly everything felt very silly. This invisible border I was dutifully building between us suddenly felt absurd. I stopped playing Trump and paid attention to the reality of the situation, which was that I was so grateful he was here. Any ego or self-soothing moping I had been indulging in started to feel just that: indulgent.

So we began again, as friends. The event of his illness had reframed the nature of us, cleansed our timeline, gave us carte blanche to hang out, or at least in my mind. We dated other people, respected each other’s singleness, and built a new foundation. He looked after Astrid when I went on holiday. We laughed when he was repeatedly recommended on my dating app’s standouts. We talked about life, work, and all the rest of it.

One of my biggest problems in relationships is living in my head, in the possibility of what might be or what might happen, rather than what’s happening in front of me. When my ex, now boyfriend, and I were hanging out without our imaginary future playing out simultaneously in my head, I was more present. I realised that my nervous system really does calm. That we laugh all the time. That we’re on the same page but also challenge each other, have interesting conversations, and comforting silences. We’re good at conflict resolution. That all sounds incredibly boring I KNOW. Thankfully, we have fun, too. I realised that the present was as exciting as anything I could envision. I ran through all the reasons in my head why this was ill-advised, why I was just an idiot deluding myself. This isn’t fate or serendipity; it’s par for the course. You always want what’s no longer yours. You see your ex-partner anew when you’re broken up.

I confided in friends that I was worried I might start wanting to get back with him. One challenged me on why this would be a problem. Another admitted that she had always hoped we would. I started to question how much of my resistance was to do with ego, with proving myself to be a woman of my word, strong-willed and grounded. At this point, he and I hadn’t spoken about this happening. I had convinced myself that he wouldn’t want that, so it was futile anyway.

Towards the end of last year, he asked if we should talk about what we were doing. I agreed, assuming he was going to suggest that we cut the cord, dissolve the friendship, move on. Instead, he asked me how I might envision it would work if we got back together, what I would need, what he would need. The conversation was, at points, uncomfortable. We both spoke of the ways in which we had been at fault and the reasons why we thought it might be different. It was admitting to our weaknesses and assessing the cracks, recognising how we’d relied on the relationship unfolding by itself.

Truthfully, it had been on and off from the beginning. In fact, it was always somewhat ‘giving it a go’. Why not? Let’s see. It was a relationship built on fractures, fragmented times of togetherness punctuated with apartness. The Big Gap, our breakup of over a year, and subsequent friendship had apparently been what we needed. Independently, we bridged the gaps that we so desperately tried to patch over in past iterations of us. All of this to say, it’s going really well, thank you for asking.

I don’t even know why writing this feels like a mea culpa. It’s a lovely, beautiful thing. But I guess I am too cynical and too scared and too wise to label it as anything other than the truth: that we work together, and it took time apart, self-assessment on both sides, and some soul-searching to choose each other again. And that it was a choice. If this was ten years ago, I’d have romanticised it to the hilt. ‘We kept coming back to each other.’ ‘It’s meant to be,’ etc. I think honestly, we had to have believed the break up was real as we did, to grieve the relationship, and basically move on, in order to get to where we are now, which is a new place.

As I write this, I am sitting in Waterstones in Cheltenham, my new local haunt for writing, on one of the squishy, cosy leather (pleather?) seats, with Astrid on my coat on another. I was happily writing until a gentleman asked if he could sit at my table, to which, of course, I obliged. Soon after, a pal of his appeared. These men are potentially in their late seventies or even eighties, who am I to say. Before you know it, a third has appeared. I shuffle Astrid onto my lap to make space for the final chum. At this point, we have already chatted a little about Astrid, and in no time at all we’re deep in conversation about, well, everything. In the past two hours, we have discussed the Epstein files, the price of gold, their favourite books, Hamnet (one loved it, one hated it, one hadn’t seen it), nightclubs in London in the seventies, grief, Trump, and then back to literature. They have pretty good views on things. The adults are alright. One bought me peppermint tea. We just said our goodbyes.

One of the things I loved about Cheltenham last time was this. I used to often work from Pret. Astrid and I have some friends there, too, the same faces showing up in the same places at the same time. I know that exists in London as well, but I’ve not found it with the same ease, regularity or propensity for conversation.

I keep showing up in the same places, too, both metaphorically and literally. It feels like going around in circles, arriving at the same destination by a different route. Something something, it’s the journey that counts…

(I did text him after this and say we’re not allowed to break up bc I can’t write another one of these essays.)