It always starts like this — a whispered name of someone you’ll never speak to again, a memory you thought you forgot until you’re at Stav with your friend and they’re 15 feet away. “Tinder guy,” you say frantically. “Behind you. Don’t look now!” “Which one?” — “Eight-dollar ice cream.” “Oh. Did you ghost him, or did he ghost you?” “I’m actually not sure.” “What was his name again?” Then, you do the liberal arts 360 before whispering it. Or, you just text it to them instead so you don’t have to utter a single decibel out loud. Of that I am guilty.
Tinder guy was one of many “almosts” — the kind of encounters you don’t cry over, but still remember when you hear a certain song or pass someone in a worn-out flannel.
Little connections with people you’ve encountered — let’s dub them ex-adjacent, though they never turned into something lasting. They weren’t great loves, but they were something. Almosts. Though they’re often filled with disappointment, anxiety, or regret, they also provide insight into who you are and what you want. Like collecting pieces of a collage you don’t quite understand yet.
And before you know it, you see their faces swirling in your mind.
Like the nice boy you turned down, even though he always made you laugh until your stomach hurt. Or the guy friend who asked if he could read your writing, and you walked home with a stupid grin you couldn’t wipe off — but you never did let him. The blushing blond from your old job, who never mustered up the courage to ask you out. The fun, four-hour Tinder date you think of as a fond memory, even though it didn’t work out.
None of them turned into something lasting, but they linger anyway — quiet, incomplete chapters in a book you never finished. These memories don’t ache the same way anymore. But some still sting, as exposing your young heart to the world of dating inevitably will.
Like how you used to wonder what was wrong with you in high school, watching everyone else get asked to dances while you never did — only to spend your freshman year of college pretending not to notice guys gawking at you left and right. You wish you could go back and tell your 16-year-old self, because she’d never believe it.
Or when you were 17, and the curly-haired boy from APUSH turned you down, and your best friend just shook her head and said, “Who wouldn’t want to date you?” And you felt kind of okay again.
Still, there’s the frustration that gnaws at you. Like that one person who will never look at you the way you look at them, and you wondering if rejection ever does get easier.
And then you ponder the even harder truth: there’s that person who sees your spark, who likes you and would love to be with you… but you don’t like them back. You can’t help it. You just don’t.
The more people you meet, crushes you have or attract, the more you realize that maybe it’s all balanced. You come to understand that the person who doesn’t like you back can’t help it either.
Though, the more things don’t work out, the more you wonder if they ever will. Sadly, no one you’ve met in the last five or so years have turned out to be “The One.” Most of them weren’t even close, lots of them have probably long forgotten you by now. But love the “almosts.” I think fondly of the few of mine I remember the clearest, who I enjoyed meeting the most. It makes me happy to know I experienced little flashes of connection — even if they didn’t last. Moments where someone made me laugh, made me think, made me feel seen. That kind of magic doesn’t need to end in forever to still mean something.
I’ll probably have to delete Tinder because my thumb is getting tired of scrolling past dudes posing next to dead deer. But hey, it was fun while it lasted. It brought me some of my “almosts,” and helped complete another chapter in the strange, chaotic novel of modern love.
