No Man Ever Broke My Heart Like Leaving London Did

The world is buzzing with the startling percentage of Gen Z who have never been in a romantic relationship (44%, to be exact). As a twenty-two-year-old who’s never changed her relationship status from single, the term in love feels like a forbidden phrase. It’s a bottle placed on a shelf I can’t quite reach.

I’ve seen my friends grow tall enough to reach their bottles, popping them open and sipping the bubbly drink with stars in their eyes. I’ve also seen them drunk on the sweetness, bent over in pain. Bottles smashed over heads, glass scattered across the floor. No one leaves unscathed.

I’m no stranger to rom-coms or crushes or even first dates, but what I’ve never experienced is that head-over-heels feeling, launching you into oblivion. The kind that makes you forget your name and question your entire existence.

I believed I’d escaped the disease they called lovesick. Never ever would I be subjected to the wreckage it created, the ache it caused. That was, until my plane landed at Heathrow Airport.

It was my first time in London, and I would be there for two weeks doing archival research with my university. Natives would describe January as the worst time to visit England, with its grey skies and frequent downpours, but from the moment I arrived, I became infatuated; what I assumed to be one of the initial symptoms of falling in love.

There was an energy to the city that was so different from my life in the rural Midwest. Limitless potential lived in the air as I walked down rain-soaked sidewalks and navigated the Tube. Only a few days into my trip, and I knew two weeks was nowhere near enough time.

There was no man standing in front of me holding a boombox or declaring his undying love for me, but this feeling aligned with the starstruck wonder I’d seen in the movies. Fingers wrapped around the bottle, I’d finally reached it.

And this was only the beginning.

I went back to London immediately after college graduation to work as a publishing intern. For me, it felt like a no-brainer. A siren sound from across the ocean beckoning me to get myself back there, ASAP.

I don’t think the gravity of my chosen situation hit me until I was sitting inside my new apartment all alone, four thousand miles away from everyone I knew. Factor in a healthy dose of jet lag, and I had myself a vicious panic attack. I didn’t sleep at all that first night. The only thing keeping me from calling an Uber back to the airport was my phone propped on my windowsill with my sister on FaceTime. She sat at my parents’ kitchen table, coaxing me into believing I was safe and everything was going to be fine. How was it possible that I was on one side of the world, rocking back and forth in psychosis, while my family was on the other side, chopping onions for dinner?

One night into my new life, and I was already plotting my escape route home. The London in my head must have been some kind of dream; a delusional crush who devastatingly didn’t like me back.

Until I woke up the next morning and realized where I was.

London.

My soul city.

I was exactly where I needed to be.

I was in love, remember?

And slowly but surely, the wrinkles in my life that had been shoved into two suitcases started to smooth out.

I made the most wonderful friends, who were also my flatmates. We went on day trips and danced in clubs, and shared a Tesco membership card. We ate meal deals in Hyde Park and snapped blurry candid photos of each other, but you could always see the laughter in our smiles.

Over those sixteen weeks, those girls became some of the closest friends I’ve ever known. Now, we’re spread across oceans and time zones, but for a time, we all lived in a tiny flat in central London, living out our dreams.

They say love can give you the strength to endure the most strenuous of circumstances, yet another ramification I can now confirm.

During the early parts of my relationship with the city, my credit card got stolen, I was forced to move apartments, and I was spending more time alone than I had in my entire life.

But you see, it isn't perfection a person falls in love with; it's captivation.

Plus, I believe a real test of true love is when everything is far from perfect, yet there’s still no person (or place) you’d rather be with. Despite my lack of relationship experience, I’d always had a sneaking suspicion my attachment style bordered on avoidant. Yet another reason to thrive: the ache of vulnerability cannot touch a city wrapped so tightly within itself. Perhaps another side effect of true love is fearlessness, because the stuff seemed to be injected straight into my veins. It started with taking a contemporary dance class after work. The first time I walked into the tiny studio outside of Angel, I was over a decade out of practice. Still, I was surrounded by people from all walks of life who were there for different reasons, yet we all ended up doing the same choreography.

When taking a beginner’s class, especially in something as vulnerable as dancing, there’s a specific kind of surrender one must make to their ego. As I danced next to mothers, starving artists, corporate workers, and students, there were moments we’d catch one another’s gaze in the mirror and just laugh. Here we were, a mismatched group of people trying to put one foot in front of the other without falling.

It was the kind of environment where nobody fit in, so everybody belonged. A concept so quintessentially London, I couldn’t write a better metaphor, even if I tried.

Sometimes I’d simply smile to myself, sitting on the Jubilee Line, thinking: this is it. This is the feeling I’ve been chasing for my entire life.

I felt like I had finally become the girl in my head; my body had finally caught up with my mind.

All that time spent being seventeen and sad, afraid I would never fall into the love I so desperately desired, was behind me, and I could finally just live.

I was young and drunk on the bottle in a city that lit my heart on fire. I loved London, and to my absolute delight, it loved me back.

London. Loved. Me. Back.

It felt like a damn miracle.

I once saw a quote that said, “To love and to be loved is like feeling the sun from both sides,” and even in the depths of November, under a tumultuous grey sky with rain spitting at my cheeks, I felt it.

The sun from both sides.

But at the same time, there was this separation from it all; a distance I was forced to keep between love and reality.

I may have been a lovesick fool, but I knew London wouldn’t last forever.

It was a truth I’d known the entire time, but refused to think about once I was two drinks in. My visa was only temporary, after all, and at the end of four months, British Airways reminded me of my upcoming return flight to Ohio. As I packed my life back into those two dusty suitcases hiding under my bed, it felt like I sipped the last drop from my bottle. I’d used up all the bubbles and lived out all my fantasies. All I could do now was wipe the glitter from my eyes and go home.

I wasn’t just leaving a place. I was leaving a part of myself; the best parts of myself and it felt like the ultimate act of treason.

I don’t cry in front of people, but I do cry in front of airport monitors. And perhaps that was proof enough that the whole ordeal had been more than just a fling.

It was the real, living, breathing thing.