(apologies in advance if anything here comes across overly personal, I'm incredibly intoxicated tonight)

It was the first time in my life I felt emotionally satisfied. I've always been incredibly lonely, evenings are always miserable for me. Since highschool I've had this hole in my heart, like something was missing from my life. Like something wasn't there. I've always wanted a relationship, but I had no idea how to make it happen. I was rejected a few times before my first relationship. I had no idea why, I had no idea what I was doing wrong.

I always felt like I wanted to bypass this stupid paradigm of dating. Yes, looking at it objectively, it seems very romantic, something I would enjoy, but I've never been able to figure out how to get into it. I don't know how to flirt. I've never been able to tell when a girl likes me. However, I'd always wanted a life partner. Someone to share my life with. To travel with, to come home to in the evenings. I always saw dating as this foreign thing, nothing more than a means to a really sought after end. But importantly, and the main theme of this post, I saw my goal of having a life partner as unreachable. No idea how to get there, but something I wanted and thought about constantly.

My first (and only) relationship came around the beginning of second year university. Prior to it happening, I had never been on a date. I met this incredibly attractive and light hearted girl through my roommate. She was clearly an extrovert; she was nothing like me. We had hung out a few times, only in large groups. I was very much infatuated.

It was Thursday, September 3rd, 2015. There was a lightning storm and pouring rain. I was texting with her (or moreso she was texting with me) about going outside in it. Over the past year I had become very much enthusiastic about the outdoors. Eventually she met up with me outside at our university (I lived in the uni dorms, she was off campus). We ended up running around for an hour in the pouring rain outside, chasing the lightning storm. We ended up (by her design) sleeping together. To me, it was a dream come true.

A couple of days later, it happened again. A year later, towards the end of the relationship, she told me that she was only intending for a one night stand, but at the time I told her that night I wanted a relationship.

It ended up becoming a relationship. We ended up living together. I actually felt like my life was whole. A relationship was in fact, what the hole in my heart wanted. My life felt complete.

We were together about a year. A couple of months ago, it ended. It wasn't an entirely unexpected ending, misunderstanding and different expectations had been the norm for about a month prior to the end.

I can't help but look back on the relationship as an anomaly, even though it did feel like an emotional consolidation. I miss it. Largely because I still hold the same views towards dating (foreign, enigmatic) that I did before the relationship. I have this unquenchable feeling that I'll never be able to experience that level of emotional satisfaction again in my life again, which makes my lamentation for the relationship unbearable.

Right now, being single feels like a return to the status quo for me. Though it has reintroduced significant free time in my life for hobbies like worldbuilding, conlanging, politics, it has also reintroduced a sense of loneliness.

Right now, I look at dating as something unobtainable. I have dedicated a large portion of my time towards it, trying to meet women. I still don't care for the paradigm, my interest is only in the end goal of a long term relationship. Emotional satisfaction. That's really want I want. In contrast to the looming fear that I'll spend the rest of my life single, alone.

I miss my relationship. It was the best year of my life. I want it back, but I know it's gone. It seems almost a dream to me, because of how much of an anomaly it was in my life. Me, socially awkward, never feeling that I was really a social contributor to others, ending up in a relationship for a full year. I still can't comprehend that for a full year, there was a real person, with real sentience and consciousness, emotionally dependent on me.

Being single feels both as a return to the status quo, and as something foreign. It better matches the trendline of my life, but still feels like something that I'm uncomfortable with.

Sorry for all the text. I really appreciate anyone who spends the time to read it all.