2022 Review: The Crumpled Year
2022 could have been notable for many things. It could have been the year I had a piece published in a book, the year I took a solo trip to Lisbon, the year I wrote a book proposal. But no. 2022 will always be the year I had my heart broken twice by the same person.
I can’t really sugar the pill; this has not been a good year. It has been characterised by a looseness, a distractedness, a general lack of presence – living too much in imagined scenarios of a just-out-of-reach-but-not-real life. At best I was directionless and unfocused; at worst I experienced bouts of depression that seeped like an ink stain through my mind. I feel I’m ending this year a less confident, less trusting version of myself.
2022 began with me alone in my house, being temporarily ghosted by the person I’d been seeing for three months. The first few months of the year were a mess of the two of us not being honest and our actions saying different things to our words; a mess of his reticence and my determination. I was making Mapping, trying to revel in the creation (as that was my word of the year), whilst constantly thinking and guessing and strategising about how I was going to make this relationship happen. Eventually I couldn’t take the lack of control anymore, the constant hanging on, and I told him I didn’t want us to be in contact for a while.
During this period I’d also been launching Mapping. This was an interesting launch, the first new thing I’d sold since July 2020, and I’d forgotten how it all worked. A hundred people had signed up to the waitlist, and for some reason I therefore set my target for the launch at 100 sales. 100 sales would be most of the money I needed for the whole year. Reader - I did not make 100 sales. It actually ended up being by far my best launch of the year, but I was bitterly disappointed to only make a third of my ridiculously unrealistic target. I had forgotten that email list conversion rates are 1-3%, not 95%. I had forgotten that if you don’t sell anything for a year and a half then it’s rather a big ask to have people drop everything to buy from you. In hindsight I’m happy with how it went, but at the time I felt disenchanted, like a failure.
So the first two months set the tone for the rest of the year – disappointment, perceived failure, rejection.
***
March I mostly remember as walking in the rain feeling miserable. Every day doing the same little turn around the block through the drizzle, trying to recoup a plan for the year given that I didn’t make £20k from the Mapping launch, but mostly thinking about him, missing him, wondering if he was thinking about me. I remember sitting in my bed on a day so wet I couldn’t go outside, and feeling like I needed to do something. To get out of this rut – but also, if I’m honest, get out of the rut into more of a person he would want. I began looking at travel, at co-working destinations. Three days later I’d booked flights and a room. I was going to Lisbon for three weeks.
I was nervous to go. I wasn’t sure whether I’d have enough get up and go on my own, whether I’d just stay in my room, whether I’d feel intimidated in a city, whether three weeks was too long. A few weeks before I got back in touch with the guy I’d been seeing and we messaged timidly for a while before he suggested catching up some time, and I enjoyed nonchalantly mentioning it would have to be some time soon because I was going to Lisbon for three weeks. We met on my birthday, shared a beer at the top of the hill, and tacitly started again. Four days later I was on a plane.
Lisbon was the high point of the year; it was one of the high points of my life. Despite frantic messages to friends on the first morning that I’d made a huge mistake booking a shared apartment, by 10am I was hitting my stride and never looked back. I loved the city, the museums, the restaurants, the place I’d get coffee and a cinnamon bun and read most mornings. I loved walking for miles and miles into the suburbs, I loved the heat, I loved knowing my way around. I loved scribbling in my little notebook on benches and street corners and bar stools. Most of all, I loved who I was. I loved that I quietly and confidently met my own needs, I loved that I didn’t overthink, I loved that I treated myself, I loved that I prioritised pleasure. I swore I’d do all this when I got home.
I returned home to leaves on the trees and light evenings. A wonderful summer stretched ahead, of visiting friends in Devon and in London, of summer walks in the mountains, of reading in the garden. I worked on and launched The Cabin, and even though it was an uphill struggle (the curse of the summer launch) I was too busy falling in love to worry about it too much. We were happy, we were breezy, and although I panicked every time he didn’t reply and although I overthought and checked with friends over every message, it felt like we were just on the cusp of it all clicking, of it all becoming easy. At the end of July we went to a supper club and he gushed about my work to the other guests and patted my knee under the table and as we held hands walking back to the car I thought “we’re doing this, it’s happening, we’re here”.
The next time I saw him he ended it. Well he didn’t end it, he said he didn’t think he could commit so we should not talk for a little bit. I was reeling, but hopeful – he was just freaking out, I just needed to give him space and become the person he wanted. I started sharing more on Stories - of my adventures up mountains, of my work, of my cinema trips – so he’d be able to see, so he’d be able to miss me, so he’d be able to know. My girlfriends visited for a weekend and it was so nourishing to explore with them, to inhale pizza and laugh. I saw an ad on the window of a local café and got the job. I hadn’t contacted him because I was scared he would say he hadn’t missed me, that he still wasn’t ready, but after seven weeks I couldn’t keep hanging on.
What I hadn’t expected was for him to tell me he was seeing someone else. What I hadn’t expected was for the real reason he ended it to be that he had already met her.
***
There is something so specific about the pain of being replaced. Because you have the usual heartbreak of losing someone you love – of missing them, of every single fucking thing reminding you of them, of rejection. But then you also have the pain that you were not enough for them, and it was so easy for them to find someone who was; it was so easy for them to not have you in their life anymore, and now you are no longer important.
During this period I lost the will. I withdrew from my friends, I completely lost my appetite to the point I was nearly sick when I ate something. I knew the things to do to make myself feel better, to nourish and care for myself, but I did not want to do them. I did not want to treat myself kindly, I did not want anything good because I did not deserve it. I remember swimming lengths in the pool, not pausing for a breath at each end, forcing myself to keep going faster, pushing harder, feeling intently that I wanted, needed, to punish myself. Punish myself for not being good enough.
Through all of the black ink in my brain though, I still knew I wouldn’t feel this way forever. The longing I had had for him all year turned into a mourning – for what it was, for what it would never now be. I had a disappointing one night stand, and another, which nonetheless put a distance between me and him. I pulled myself together to be present and correct for my friend’s hen do. I began to realise that it wasn’t really him, but the idea of him. That I had cast him in a role he’d never volunteered to play, givi him lines he’d never really say; that I was so eager for our imagined future I had ignored the present reality. I saw all the things I’d swept under the rug, all the compromises I’d made; I saw all the ways I’d crumpled myself down into a shape I thought he’d want me to be. I saw how much I’d let myself ebb away.
***
I saw that for the last two years, since the big break up, I’ve been living according to “I’ll see what happens”. I think I got into that habit when I didn’t know where I was going to be living from one month to the next in 2021, and in 2022 it mutated to mean “I’ll see if this person is going to love me”. I was waiting for that and not planning my own life because I was seeing what would happen with someone else.
I wasn’t important enough to myself this year. I thought I was. I thought I knew better, I thought I was doing what I wanted but it was actually giving up my agency. The truth is that I abandoned myself this year. I put my future and my dreams and my worth in the hands of someone who was never supposed to hold them. I waited, I stood by, I hoped but I didn’t take responsibility. I drifted. I allowed myself to spend a year believing I wasn’t enough.
In 2023, it’s time to come home to me.