For all those new to the love game or have weirded out almost every one of your brother’s friends, can I just say it’s a very opaque pond to fish in. Perhaps, even thrilling at the best of times.
It takes not only skill but endurance and unwavering stability in yourself. Very much like trying to find a flat in a short time-frame. And of course one that is in your ideal location, littered with cute coffee shops and even cuter baristas, donning geometric tattoos.
It needs to be somewhere you want to spend time, sharing your company with cool and quirky people who will overshadow your lack of room space and cooking craft.
You know what you want, but alas it is out of reach. Rejection in the form of a swipe right or perhaps worst, no reply at all. At least that way, you can keep the recipt of failure as a souvenir.
Many people can only take so long in either field before they reach their peak, prize-less and despondent. What was once so exciting, filled with infinite possibilities in regards to your new lifestyle turns into a game of hide and seek.
‘Seek’ being alway you. ‘Hide’ also being you, especially when an undesirable place/person directly contacts your mobile. At this stage, your optimism is mixed in a dangerous cocktail of desperation and self-loathing. Why does no attractive, high-ceiling old terrace houses with my own veranda, want me? I’m right here! I can invest my money and writing savvy into obtaining it, but does it care? No.
Because it knows it is of high currency, aka its attractive AF.
So it makes you wait.
It makes you obsess.
It makes you exhausted and finally, it makes you either swear or settle.
“I could totally live with a couple around my age! Their place may look like a brothel but I figure if I come home drunk every-night, it will at least make the place look more homely!” I heard my inner desperate-self say, with a picture-perfect smile.
Or…
“I could totally live in a semi-nice house in a suburb 40 minutes from my UNI. Home is 40 minutes away but at least this way I can tell dad I found somewhere, with an even shittier room which he has to pay for!”
The Tinder equivalent pep talk being along the lines of:
” It doesn’t matter that all his profile pics are of this one girl! I bet she is his sister! Nope… you don’t see a photo opportunity as an invitation to grab your sister’s ass…. ”
Or,
“I can totally go out with this guy! I mean I did add him when I was drunk and he was more my-type but perhaps the attraction will comes from an unexpected place! Like his mother’s take on apple crumble or his brother! Dear god may be have a brother… ”
Perhaps if my time-frame wasn’t as tight for finding a place or a match, I could have found the time apart from these window-shopping expeditions as more endearing. Refreshing even. But in three days and a count-down voiced by my dad I was beyond hope. Even the drunk kind. I needed a Christmas miracle, in February.
But for the rest of those without annoying follow you about time-bombs, the chase/search for a new start can become a stress-relieving hobby, an escape from work or a rainy day.
It’s a weird thing that settles inside yourself, once you become single. You become more open and curious about everything. Like all that space that someone once cluttered up with their bullshit suddenly becomes vacant.
For many, this can feel like a gaping wound they quickly need to fill with anyone who bothers to look twice at them. But for others, if they are brave enough and patient enough to wait out this British weather, they can be pleasantly surprised by what great french-provincial furniture and super-like people can make themselves at home there, over time.
Beyond-curious 