It’s time for another edition of SE(N)O, an essay series on A+ for personal stories we wish we could tell on the accessible-to-our-employers-and-everyone-we’ve-ever-known mainsite, but can’t for personal and professional reasons.

This is a guide to falling in love for hopeless fools who can’t read maps.

These are step-by-step instructions for logistically impossible and emotionally devastating affairs that are never quite relationships but always far more than the flings they were supposed to be when they started. I lived in Nicaragua for two and a half years and had three relationships with beautiful weirdos who didn’t live there. I never meant to — each time, I just wanted the rush of a fling with no consequences. The spontaneous impact of two bodies shouldn’t have to mean something; at least that’s how it seems. But even glancing blows by one piece of matter can cause great impact to another piece of matter, especially if one is malleable or unbalanced.

These collisions have five steps.

Step 1: Meet

You’re at a party; you’re on vacation; it’s your lunch break. You feel good, or maybe just bored, or maybe a little reckless, and you scan the room, the beach, the restaurant. You stop scanning. And she winks, or he grins, or they realize you caught them staring and blush awkwardly at their own feet for a thousand years, and when they finally look back up, that’s it. Sorry babe.

The second S told me she was moving to Argentina in six days — six days! — I should have suddenly noticed something shiny and important on the other side of the lot at the weeknight cumbia party in Managua. But I didn’t. I let her drive me home. I took her out for Valentine’s Day and met her best friends.

We had just enough time to find out we really liked each other before all we had was Facebook chat. She came back for a few weeks a year later, and the second meeting was even better than the first, because this time I knew to be nervous. I can’t remember where or how we said goodbye, but I know it felt like someone ripped out the second half of a book and scattered it off the top of a volcano. 

Step 2: Kiss

You find a parked car or a quiet alley or the very center of a crowded room. You wonder for about three and a half seconds what to do about the explosion in your guts before it’s mouth on mouth and you black out the rest of the world. You know time is short, so you kiss hard enough to make the moment last forever. It won’t.

A and I wandered the streets of Copán with our friends, and then we turned a different corner. We had been flirting all day, and he seemed unbothered that I’m a bonafide Helga Pataki when I flirt with men. We climbed to the roof of our hotel and looked over the small, ancient city. I don’t know who kissed whom or how we kept from falling out of the ragged hammock. We were a tangle of limbs and fits of giggles, and at some point between going down on him and our friends finally showing up, he told me he was bi too. I was delighted, and I kissed him hard so he knew it.

The last time I saw A, we had settled into that strangely comfortable crevice between being exes and friends. I marveled at his jawline and wondered if he might be the last boy I’d ever love.

Step 3: Fall

Maybe you lie to yourself for a while, or maybe you don’t give a fuck. There is something about this person that makes you feel a way you’ve always wanted to feel, and that’s close enough to love. You daydream about uprooting your whole life to somehow make this thing happen, even though you know they aren’t The One because The One is fiction. But your body won’t let go of the rush.

K gave me –x endings to my pronouns in Spanish and it was like someone handed me a shirt that fit after I had been wearing a size too small my whole life. Ellx felt like a question mark instead of a constricted and impossible standard. The changing of a letter resolved a psychological wrestling match I had faced every day in Centroamérica. In the middle of what we meant to be a one-night stand during a conference in San José, Costa Rica, I said “te amo” because it was the only way to reciprocate the magnitude of their gift to me. They said it back with panic in their eyes, and I clung to it.

We fought, and then we reconciled. They came to Managua for my last weekend in the country and saw the love-drenched universe I had crafted for myself. At 4 a.m., in between last call at the dance bar and a burrito at daybreak, I took them to the bus station so they could go back to San José. After a long night of dancing to all my favorite cumbia songs and kissing all my friends on the face one last time, it barely stung when K didn’t say I love you back.

A few hours later I got on a plane from Managua to Dallas and felt myself split in two.

Step 4: Break

You can’t really call it a break up, because you weren’t really together. But as you start to break apart, feel all the bliss and bad judgment that brought you to this moment. It’s ok, sweet one. It was worth it.

Every time it ended — always at a slow drip as one or both of us accepted the impossibility of it all — I felt crushed. It was never my fault; it was always my fault. Blame has no place in the dissolution of reckless fancy. Each time, I leaned into heartbreak hard.

Pretending To Be Fine: A Self Portrait

And then I got over it. The appeal of these relationships is getting a thousand butterflies without the potential for true and devastating heartbreak. That doesn’t make it less real, it just means you don’t have to live inside it forever. Falling out of love feels easier when love wasn’t something you meant to do in the first place.

Step 5:

Step five was supposed to be Breathe or Discover Yourself as I entered a time of reflection and rebuilding that required I remain single. But I’ve never been much good at breathing. Here’s what actually happened: A week after I moved back to Texas, I met Wynn. Two months later, she helped me move into an apartment less than a mile away from hers — a coincidence, I swear. Before the smell of fresh paint had dissipated, she asked me to be hers and asked to be mine. When she looks at me, I feel like an actual real human being. I look back at her like her heart is a treasure. We get to look at each other like this whenever we want. It happened just like before — my little bundle of matter collided with another in a moment we never expected. But this time we don’t need a map to comprehend the miles between us. This time we get to stay.

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