Emmarose S.
Photography by Lydia Troupe
If you’re reading this, listen to your body. You owe it to yourself to listen.
If you’re up at 3 AM with a racing heart and deafening thoughts, struggling to sleep, stuck on the question of when a certain person will respond to your text and tell you they still want to be with you, there’s a bigger problem that deserves to be addressed.
I’m twenty-one. Since I was fifteen, I have been in several back-to-back long-term relationships. This past September, I got out of a two-year relationship after an amicable and mutual breakup. This loss was particularly impactful, as it was my first queer relationship after coming to terms with my lesbian identity. She and I had —and luckily still have via a tight-knit friendship—an intimate bond that made me feel seen and taken care of. Navigating life as a young sapphic adult without the safety net of a partner was uncomfortable, unexplored territory for me. For the first time in my formative years, I did not have an intimate connection with someone who was supposed to love me unconditionally and unequivocally. Choosing immediate comfort over self-growth, I turned to dating apps to search for the type of love I wasn’t used to living without.
Within a few weeks, I was satisfying my need for a fix of intimacy, diving head and heart-first into 24-hour dates, late-night calls, and constant texts with a new partner. Sugar-high on sweet nothings, we laughed until our stomachs were sore. We explored Atlanta together, holding hands on Ferris wheels and adventuring to movie theaters, arcades, and my most prized dinner spots. All my favorite romance novel tropes were finally my own. We sped through the highway, hearts racing just as fast, kissing at every red light and blasting our favorite love songs. I had never been in a relationship with this much passion, longing, and immediacy. I had never fallen into love so quickly.
This excitement made it more difficult to see the bigger picture: this relationship was eroding my mental health and sense of self. I became addicted to the dopamine drip of her nonstop texts. My days felt incomplete without saying goodnight before bedtime. At first, I couldn’t understand why I felt this need for constant reassurance and attention, as I wasn’t burdened with these concerns during any of my previous relationships. I rationalized that maybe it was because she was new. Maybe it was because she felt too good to be true — more suited for me than any love I’d experienced before.
Highway-speeding love is exhilarating but also dangerous, especially if you’re falling without caution, never wearing a seatbelt. Car stereos blaring love songs prevent you from hearing the warning bells. We only ever drove in her car. She always had control of the steering wheel.
We could only talk when she wanted to, and only on her terms. She was introverted and resorted to solitude for comfort after stressful days at work or painful interactions with her family. She struggled with her mental health and a high-intensity work environment, which led to ever-present stress and depression. Talking about her feelings was often too overwhelming, so she chose silence instead. She withdrew if I asked when we would see each other next because looking at her schedule reminded her of the daunting responsibilities on her plate. If we had a conflict, there would be occasions where she didn’t speak to me for anywhere from two to six days at a time.
Some people absolutely have the capacity and capability of supporting a partner who needs this degree of space to cope with stress and process conflict. I don’t place any blame on her for having these needs or for advocating for herself when she needed to be alone. But I learned the hard way that I do not have the strength to sustainably meet those needs without displacing my own.
The first time she needed space, we didn’t speak for six days. With the help of my incredibly understanding roommates, I dragged my Twin XL dorm mattress to the living room floor to feel less lonely and to distract myself from the insecure thoughts that would come when inevitably alone in my bedroom. We would eventually cycle through these periods of silence every two or three weeks, the end of each one marked by my gracious roommates helping me return my mattress to its rightful spot in my room.
Once it started happening so often that I couldn’t reasonably keep asking my (kind and still willing) roommates to help me drag my mattress back and forth, I crashed on the stiff couch instead. Heartbreak quickly materialized to physical pain as my back ached, my anxiety as inflexible as the couch springs digging into my spine. After a few days, I devised a trick: putting two thick blankets down as a pseudo-mattress pad to keep my back from getting sore. Earplugs kept the noise from my roommates out. T-shirts over my eyes let me sleep with the lights on. I had a routine. I was getting good at this.
When I still couldn’t sleep, I bought myself “anti-stress and anxiety” CBD gummies hoping they’d help me get through the periods of days when she couldn’t talk to me. My period came two weeks early and I had stress-induced spotting (it’s a thing, look it up!) for over thirty-five days. My appetite faded and I lost weight. Too many times to admit, I was so anxious that I lost meals to nausea. I would have dreams about her texting me back only to wake up to a phone empty of notifications. My body was screaming at me, begging me to take the reins of my life back.
After I had been waiting to hear from her for three days, one of my sleepless nights on the living room couch was interrupted by a lengthy text telling me she wanted to end things. My fingertips numbed, ears rang, stomach dropped. My vision hazed with welled tears as I read how she loved me but couldn’t keep trying to make things work when our needs were so different. I was torn between being angry with her choice to give up and admitting that what she said was true.
Being partnered since adolescence meant I didn’t know how to exist comfortably in solitude. Every night, I had a person which whom to share every minuscule thought and detail about my day. A sense of vulnerability and purposelessness crept its way into my body when this intense level of emotional intimacy was no longer accessible to me, and it made me physically sick. Forcing myself to ask for help, I messaged my closest friends to let them know what happened.
Friendship is such a beautiful thing. Swiftly, my roommates, coworkers, and best friends were offering hugs, personal stories, and listening ears. Anushka and Grace dissected every minuscule detail of the breakup text with me until I’d processed it. Luke organized a trip to my favorite boba shop with Jason and Bre, cracking jokes to help me get out of my own head. Luna reminded me to accept that healing takes time. Cat and Princess helped me feel comfortable telling people that I wasn’t okay. Ethan, Ryan, and Ruston stayed up with me until ungodly hours of the night, listening to my every thought and encouraging me to feel my feelings instead of suppressing them. These were growing pains, they reminded me.
And grow I did. Two-and-a-half months' worth of growing pains later, I feel fully comfortable in solitude. I don’t feel incomplete for not having a partner to constantly rely on. My reassurance and validation come from within now. I have grown into my independence and cherish it.
We broke up in the wintertime. I felt cold, vulnerable, and barren. It is springtime now. The clouds of my anxiety have fully vanished, and I sleep peacefully. It is astonishing how easily beauty can blossom when the sun can shine through. Flowers have bloomed around me in unexpected ways through friendships and opportunities. My branches have extended, reaching toward new experiences and passions. The roots of my self-confidence and self-sufficiency have deepened, strengthening my autonomy to stand sturdily through thunderstorms and droughts.
As for my romantic life, I am embracing the value of fleeting connections and accepting impermanence. I’ve met so many wonderful people over the past few months and experimented with diverse relationship styles. Lesbian bars and sapphic dating apps are now spaces of exploration and excitement rather than means to cope with a need for romantic intimacy. Anxiety no longer corrodes my mind when an intimate bond fades. Dating is still something I enjoy, but it will never again be something I need.
Hindsight is always far clearer. Looking back, I wish I had listened to my body and left the relationship that made me feel so chronically stressed. Love, especially lesbian love, can be blinding. When you love fully, you can easily forget to love yourself as much as you love the idea of stitching together the fabric of a relationship that has torn beyond repair. All-consuming, world-orienting love can be beautiful, but only if the relationship is mutually meaningful and prioritized. I desperately wanted to salvage what remained of our shattered connection because I loved her deeply. She was beautiful, gentle, thoughtful, genuine, and checked all the boxes that my fantasy-driven romance novels wanted her to. But at the end of the day, we couldn’t meet each other’s needs without destroying each other in the process. I wish that I had respected myself enough to realize that my needs were not being met and my body suffered the consequences. I am confident that my future relationships will be stronger, built sturdily on the foundation of what I have learned from this experience. I urge you all to prioritize your own needs, see the bigger picture, and blossom into your full potential.
Emmarose S. (she/her), Georgia Tech
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