We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For

Growing up in Saudi Arabia, my life was always defined by how I related to men. I would be my father’s daughter until I was my husband’s wife. It was only acceptable to play with other children who were boys until an arbitrary age, when it was then deemed to be suddenly indecent. I went to a segregated school, where boys were taught how to play sports and girls were taught how to cook and sew.

Naturally, I spent a lot of time thinking about marriage throughout my childhood. I sketched designs for wedding dresses adorned with lilac flowers and cream-coloured ribbons. I daydreamed about being swept away by a man who would take me out to a place dark enough to see the stars. I recall having a particularly overwhelming crush on the father figure in a movie we watched a lot called The Wilderness Family. 

I spent my teenage years battling what I now call ‘waiting for superman syndrome’. Fuelled by a damning cocktail of sexual trauma, family dysfunction and wider societal narratives tinged with cultural nuance, I was incredibly lonely and unsure of my place in the world. The antidote to this lack of belonging rang clear in every fairytale, romance novel, love song, and romcom – to be loved, to be chosen by a man, would set things straight.

At fourteen, I “fell in love” for the first time, that all-encompassing, intensely naïve kind of love – the kind that made your teeth hurt. Our nine-month relationship mostly took place over MSN Messenger.

Then, when I was fifteen, I dated a guy in his early twenties, who handed me a sheet of paper from a yellow legal pad that read “Mohammad’s list of demands.”

At sixteen, I was seeing a Lebanese guy who smoked a lot of shisha and is now a DJ.

At seventeen, I ditched someone at an illegal prom to dance with my friend’s ex-boyfriend to a John Legend song. I convinced myself time and time again that the respective man in my life at the time was “the one.”

In my arrogance, I thought I had outgrown my naivety when I went to university, writing one of my highest-scoring papers on the commercialisation of romance and the behavioural effects associated with the consumption of romantic media. I approached relationships deliberately, always made the first move, and declared myself a feminist for doing so. I knew what I wanted, or at least I thought I did. But the truth of my experience would come to light when I could no longer ignore that my dynamic with men followed me to six cities across three continents.

For my entire life, I was always told about all the things I couldn’t do – as a woman, as anyone, as me. After I left Saudi, I didn’t need anyone to tell me what I could or couldn’t do – I had internalised the voices so much that I did it for them. Ever the optimist, I wove red flags into narrative threads that formed the basis of how I perceived being loved and the role I played in my early adult relationships. I would be one of those fiercely passionate women who loved broken men for their flaws. In return for my love, they would choose me. I had no boundaries and made a habit of giving so much of myself to my partners that I more or less disappeared.

I met my first “proper boyfriend” at a house party – a guy from Dudley who kicked me out of his dorm room just after taking my virginity so that he could play Grand Theft Auto in peace. A month after I broke up with him, I met a man at one of the weekly mediation sessions I helped to run and found myself in an abusive relationship for nearly four years. Now, when friends ask me why I didn’t leave him earlier, I tell them this: I had become accustomed to equating pain with meaning, and so I stuck around.

Again, when that relationship ended, I thought I was free.

A year later, I was dating a Nice Guy for the first time. He was the boy-next-door type – silly, personable and unimposing. It was easy. Being shown a basic level of affection and respect felt like a cool drink of water at the end of a long run. He didn’t tell me what I could or couldn’t wear. He didn’t withhold affection to win arguments. Sometimes he would surprise me with thoughtful gifts.

I now had some boundaries, but the bar was low. The ease with which things had begun slowly dissipated as I found myself bonded to someone who constantly disappointed me but was always Nice about it. Now, when friends ask me why I tried so hard to make it work, I tell them this: I had become accustomed to equating not being treated badly with winning the fucking lottery.

I had allowed myself to once again disappear into a relationship, this time in the folds of niceness rather than abuse. I abandoned myself out of fear of losing what I had grown to believe was all I would ever deserve – bare minimum. And in doing so, I committed a murder of every day’s truth.

On New Year’s Day, 2023, I watched my sister’s taxi leave for Heathrow, bound for New York City. I choked back a sob, went upstairs and spent the next six hours lying in bed. I stared at the text I had sent Mr Nice Guy the night before: “I don’t want to leave you in 2022.” I was heartbroken, to say the least.

I looked out the window and thought about how it was a beautiful day to go for a walk. The sky was bright and scattered with clouds; the weather was crisp and clear. But no matter how much I wanted to sit up or tried to tempt myself with a hot chocolate, I couldn’t move. It felt like my limbs had turned to stone.

My phone buzzed and I reached for it, cursing the tiny flutter of hope I felt in my chest. It was my friend, Mitch:

“Happy New Year! Because happiness is possible, however fleeting, and newness is given with every pulse of the clock and the blood, and years are just how we organise ourselves. But otherwise, as you were: searching, thinking, risking, loving, healing, fighting”. 

I vented about my heartbreak and asked all the usual questions. “Will this feeling end?” “What if it doesn’t?” He told me that pain lifts like mist. That I was sure to bear the scar but not the wound. He told me not to wait, that one day I would tell my best friend about the loss of this one and look back in wonder. “A friend of mine likes to say that we are the ones we have been waiting for.”

We are the ones we have been waiting for – the words were sobering and invigorating, like running into the sea on a cold day in late October. I could feel my mind wrapping around them as I said them aloud. I leaned on them as I slowly sat up and gathered myself to go outside.

For the next few months, I tried to direct the love I had always poured into nurturing romantic partners towards my own life. I started by making a meal that I loved when I was a kid and pushed myself to go to a Swing dance class.

In February, I drank whiskey at a punk show in Slovakia.

In March, I broke down in a diner in Salt Lake City and went on a date in San Francisco, gifting the guy a pair of Oscar Meyer Weiner socks. The spring characteristically brought with it a sense of awakening. A stranger drove me out to the lighthouse in Montauk and showed me the stars. I swam in cold water. I slept with a friend of a friend, and despite my best efforts at keeping it casual, I allowed him to convince me that it was a good idea to be together.

By the summer, I had hugged every one of my four sisters, which hardly ever happens in a year anymore. I set foot on a new continent. I had a bite out of possibly the worst banana ever. I drank tea with my mother as we watched a storm through my living room window.

Autumn brought the smell of blood and a profound grief for the state of the world. I felt more alone than ever. I spent a Sunday afternoon in late November with two strangers in a pub in Highgate. Come December, I celebrated Christmas with my partner’s family in Ireland. I was restless, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was not where I belonged.

After several fights about his drinking habits and my “woke” politics, he was the one to finally call it. I didn’t eat for days. I cried so hard that my body went numb. When I flew to Dublin to see him that weekend, we sat in a sauna box on the beach in Greystones and jumped into the sea. I remember telling him that this breakup felt so much more painful than I thought it would. I knew it hurt so much because it was the last of its kind. Of course, he didn’t understand.

After hearing him say I was easy to hurt and difficult to love, I wondered if he was right. I spent so long abandoning myself, for other people’s needs, for shitty relationships, for a version of myself that I didn’t recognise. It dawned on me that I had never imagined my future without a man in it. I had outsourced loving myself to any man who would take on the burden. I thought I went from being my father’s daughter to being my own person. But while I wasn’t someone’s wife, I defined myself by being someone’s girlfriend.

I flew home to London, where my little sister was in pieces over some guy she met on a dating app. I felt angry. I hugged her tight and planned her birthday party. I recalled a conversation with my ex when I expressed that sometimes I felt something had broken inside me that couldn’t be fixed. He cheesily responded, “maybe you’re a glowstick.” I think back to that statement a lot, and I revel in the image; something in me had broken somewhere along the line, inviting all this light to rush right in.

I cleaned my room. I started running again. On my first run, I projectile vomited to a Taylor Swift song less than two kilometres in; I ran three more kilometres home. I officiated my friend’s wedding on a beach near Fort Myers. I met my friend Stella on a warm day in August and danced on a boat docked in the nearby canal. I celebrated ten years of knowing my friends from university. In October, I ran the Royal Parks Half-marathon. In November, I took my mother on a surprise trip to Vienna. I celebrated my first solo Christmas, inviting two lonely strangers from my local pub to have dinner with me.

I have not stopped swing dancing since that very first class I attended in January over two years ago. On Thursday mornings, I go to group therapy. Once a month, I gather with friends for our book club meeting. I cook over-the-top meals for the people I love. I say no a lot more than I ever thought I would. I have gotten over my fear of karaoke. I am training for a six-day hike in Kyrgyzstan. I laugh while wading through water on long walks. I watch Mad Men, and I am no longer attracted to Don Draper. I go on dates when I feel like it, with women as well as men.

A few months ago, I ended things with a guy I had seen a few times who was perfectly nice but was just not the right fit. Would you believe I didn’t feel guilty about it? I no longer bargain with people for their affection. I surround myself with people who find me easy to love. All my time belongs to me, and I choose to belong to the world. My life has begun to crack open, like a fissure giving way to new ground.

Some days I wake up and feel that I am occupying a life so sweet that it couldn’t possibly be my own, and my happiness gives way to suspicion. On such days, I make a point to dance, and my suspicion gives way to a deeply-rooted joy that radiates through my body. In these moments, I sometimes imagine myself knocking on the door to the house I grew up in. A younger, scrawnier me opens it. I hold out my hand and smile, “sorry for the wait.”