Between the devil and the deep blue sea. was a condition that I was born into. While growing up, my family had a Melvillian obsession where self-preservation was least considered. The escape from these living conditions for a brief time was school, and the children were cruel. Adolescence is the most violent and mean phase of a person’s life. I remember walking home considering things and humorously thinking to myself, Would an insurance broker even quote a kid? High school relationships would not stand a thirty-year mortgage. Let alone a simple two-year bill. 

I once even considered dating a girl my same age. Only to be snickered at before talking to her. Some real savages’s kids are. I was a kid who was very distant and experienced a lot of self-doubt. In solitude, I mulled over who would be a safe person to date. Then one day, while minding my own business, I was going through my room, and I had nothing to read that I hadn’t read already. So I ran off to a local used book store, and I found a bookish woman. She was considerably older than my sixteen-year-old self. 

Our conversations ranged from kafkaesque to silly and light chitchat. It goes without saying that I found a plethora of reasons to buy more books. But mostly, it was to see her. One day, I worked up the courage to ask her for coffee. She answered with a barely audible “yes.” This made my heart race, and I tried to stay calm. Then we exchanged numbers and set a date.

The first date was met with a delay; I showed up half an hour early. I kept checking the clock, and before I knew it, she was half an hour late. I considered texting her, yet I sat and contemplated my life choices and started to feel like I was a fool. It took a lot of strength to check in, so I messaged her. She replied that there was a family emergency. I offered to reschedule, and she replied that she really wanted coffee. I waited an additional hour, then she arrived with cat hair all over her and an uneven buttoned-up cardigan. She walked me through what happened to her overweight cat named Noir, and I was very charmed by this crazy cat lady. Yet I didn’t know where to go from here. I felt deathly shy, as if whatever I said would scare her away. Then something happened; she gave me a kiss on the cheek. 

Naturally, after months of doing this, we started to sleep together. This was real intimacy; at no point did it feel obscene or taboo. Our relationship was met with approval by her mother, and often after spending the night together, we watched B movies and cartoons. I would cook breakfast and eat together with her mother. The coming of age was met with an assured person who had already experienced adulthood, so it felt like an easy adjustment. Then the existential dread would creep in when I needed a change of clothes. I would have to go back to my grandparents’ house, where all the rubes would reside. The opioid crisis gutted my family, and when I would come by for a change of clothes, often there were transient people looking for something to steal or beg for twenty dollars. After years of this, it started to look like a bombed-out building, and I considered where my safe space was. After careful deliberation, I concluded it was in between my girlfriend’s legs. 

Then, when I went to school, I was met with abhorrent behavior by my peers—things I would not like to mention, but it wasn’t just snarkiness or them raising their voices. Then I was met with a really serious question that stumped me. Who would get enjoyment from caring for these people? I even doubted if their own parents enjoyed packing them lunch. Caring for people is the biggest thing in a relationship. The soft reminder is to bring a cardigan in case you get cold. checking in on a person who denies that they are hungry, only to anticipate when they will admit to being hungry and what they will want, so you can have the food done for them. When you care for someone, these things are the greatest pleasure in life, yet when you don’t love them and they are brats or ungrateful swine, it automatically becomes an enormous hassle. 

These kids grow into adults; if you can believe it, I personally refuse to. I have met enough adults who don’t care for others. I think finding common ground is a rarity. What is a two-month difference if the only thing you have in common is novelty? Then consider what a decade is if you both share literature. 

My childhood could have been a very rocky one, where I would have been around very bad characters. It didn’t have to be that way, nor did I wish to try to find someone who was not serious. My peers were either cruel or ambivalent about me being a troubled adolescent with my character flaws. 

I chose a librarian, and looking back, all my relationships have been shaped by this woman. However, I think people are contextualizing it wrongly. From a young age, I had a preference. The thought that I fell for the machinations of a milquetoast woman is laughable.