Did I at least leave some kind of mark?
I’ve reached a point in dating now where I just want to feel like the connections made at least meant something, however fleeting. The last thing I want is for things to feel meaningless.
I cottoned onto the fact that life on the whole is actually pretty meaningless early doors. My Dad died when I was 12 after being in a coma for 2.5 years. From the age of about 9, my thoughts would spiral most nights thinking about the fact that my dad has lost consciousness and I’d question what consciousness is and what the fuck happens when it’s gone and what happens when you die and how is it possible that the world keeps turning without you. It would keep me up for hours and always end in uncontrollable tears until I fell asleep from the exhaustion. I was so heartbroken for years about the fact that life has no meaning and seems so pointless. “What’s the point?” I’d say to myself, every night, over and over.
At some point a switch came on. I don’t know how. I guess there just comes a time when you become exhausted by the exhaustion, bored by the despair. But I distinctly remember at around 15 years old coming to the conclusion that yes, life has no meaning, but the excruciating pain I feel in this moment about having lost my Dad is real. It’s infallibly real. Which means his life did mean something. It meant a hell of a lot to me. So that’s where we find our meaning – in the mark we leave on others.
As an adult now I of course know that’s not an original thought, but it felt like it was at the time. Like a real eureka moment, you know? I genuinely believe I did somehow come to the realisation organically, rather than have it be explicitly told to me, but I guess it most likely seeped into my subconscious through osmosis (but then I guess is that not the same for every thought we have?!). I think it was really necessary for me to have felt like I discovered the conclusion organically - it’s much easier to believe it when in clicks into place by your own volition.
But I digress, I find myself now, over 12 years later and 3+ years into being single, desperately searching for meaning in the numerous fleeting romances I have had since my ‘big Ex’. Because again, it feels like what’s the point if there wasn’t any meaning? I want to know that I made some kind of a mark on the lives of the boys I’ve dated. I can live with not ever knowing how big that mark was for those one-or-two-date-ers, but it’s the several month ones that are real kickers. I keep finding myself, months, years, after the fact, ‘stalking’ these boys on social media, desperate for any kind of smidge of evidence that suggests I left a mark, which I am obviously never going to find. I don’t know if this is just because the rejection has got on top of me or if I’m just so bleddy scarred by how the big Ex ended things; so bluntly and coldly, ceasing all contact, disposing me from his life entirely like our 5 years together meant absolutely nothing. Thanks to 15 year old me’s conclusions, the meaning of life is founded in the relationships you maintain and the mark you leave on people, so I obviously made a pretty insignificant mark on the big Ex’s life for him to end things in that way… which means I therefore had 5 years of life with very little meaning.
I know that’s not actually true. I spent those 5 years growing and learning and deepening beautiful connections with my friends and my family, but you still can’t help feeling that way. I guess every rejection since has only made that feeling all the more stronger. So I find myself, yet again, searching for the meaning in all my failed dates and situationships, wondering where, if anywhere, I have left a mark. I hope I left a mark. I hope it meant something.