Love or hate it, I’m the type of person who can get very emotional about things. In fact, during a conversation with a good, but not super close friend a few months ago, she described me as a very ‘all or nothing-type person’ and although she wasn’t to know how much that small phrase would make me feel understood, it really hit home.

Over the last year, when I’ve been hyper-focused on my work and career, there have been numerous times when in the more quiet moments of my day I’ve sunk into feelings of loneliness and confusion. I’ve felt that because everything has been so go go go since I moved to London if I spend an afternoon doing absolutely nothing then I’m wasting time. And the guilt sinks in. So I get up and do something else. Or I start to criticise myself.

Plus, as is the case with every year, there have been times so far in 2023 when some really unpleasant things have happened in my life, and even though there has been plenty more good than bad, everybody knows that the effect of the bad things tends to stick around longer than the good. Then with my life consistently changing and by working in a space where I need to be conscious of what others think of me – rather than ignore it and #notcare – I’d started to feel like maybe I didn’t have such a solid sense of self as I’d once thought. I began to wonder what on earth I was doing, what I was supposed to be doing, how I’m meant to feel at this age, and why am I finding it so difficult to just relax?

And why do I now have these stretch marks everywhere when I haven’t grown since I was 17?

To remedy feeling lost and overwhelmed at times, I’m the kind of person who needs something to look forward to. A sense of direction. So I put a lot of my focus on the recent holiday I had with one of my best friends, where I went to America. We’d had such a brilliant time last year and felt so at home in the Big Apple, so surely going again will do the job to help me reset? And it did! But not in the way I’d originally wanted it to.

I found myself on the other side of the world, still waking up confused – sometimes kind of sad – and sitting in bars or restaurants waiting for something exciting to happen. Therefore, I put far too much pressure on situations to supply me with some kind of narrative I could use to entertain my friends to make my life sound fun and exciting; I lost sight of just having a nice time. I needed something fabulous and complicated to happen because for some reason my already fun and exciting life didn’t feel like enough.

To beat even less around the bush here, what I’d pinned a lot of my enjoyment in that trip on was receiving attention from men. One man in particular in one place – and I don’t mind typing this, because I’d eat my shoe before I believe that he’ll read this blog. Basically, to cut a long story short, last year I met somebody who I really liked and who really liked me but then I went home from holiday and that was that. It was the first time in a very long time that I’d actually felt excited about someone and even though I then dated someone else here in London who I also really liked months after meeting this man in America, the fact that the one in London didn’t work out and the trip back to the states was looming, reminded me of how exciting that first one had felt last year. And I’ve never done well with what ifs or maybes: I’m far too nosey.

It’s funny how the lacklustre nature of the dating game at the minute gets us so hung up on situations though. Because truly, I barely know this man. I met him for a short amount of time and whilst I will stand by the fact that that thing the movies, books, and songs talk about was definitely there in some capacity, we never had the chance to properly get to know each other. So who knows if that thing would’ve remained? Still, the what if stays in your memory and it’s pushed to the front of your brain when dating someone else who made you feel a similar way doesn’t work out, your work situation is too confusing and stressful to want to think about, and, would you look at that? You’re going right back to where you met him. But his experience of dating in the last year didn’t go the same way as mine; he met someone and it’s worked out. I wasn’t too upset about it (disappointed for selfish reasons, but no tears or anguish), however, it did make me reassess how I’ve been approaching aspects of my life recently.

I’ve focused so much on work for the last year, that I’d started to believe the only way I’ll achieve an emotional escape from its intensity and judgment is through being in a relationship. So dating has been a really important thing for me. If I wasn’t going on dates or talking to someone, then I was watching trash TV centered around relationships, keeping my head filled with an arsenal of reasons why I’m lonely and lacking because of not being in one.

Therefore, to cut out the opportunity for self-criticism and knocks to the self-esteem for a few months, I’m wholeheartedly not going anywhere near the dating world. At the minute, it either bores me or just makes me feel like sh*t, so I’d rather watch TV and colour in my colouring book. Maybe that’s lame, but I want more space in my head to be creative right now, and sitting around seeing if someone has replied to me on Hinge is not a vibe.

I don’t want to feel like I need to focus on a holiday to run away and find some interesting story to report back to the girls. Don’t get me wrong, long may the funny debriefs continue, but if I’m always searching for one then nothing will ever seem good enough. And where’s the fun in that?