eyes, and she spoke with such assertiveness. We’d talk online, and then on the phone. After one long conversation lasting the entire night, we met at 6 a.m. on a dare.
Our second date was at a Christmas party thrown by the elementary school where I was a teacher. She introduced herself to everyone as my fiancée; she was fearless and bold, like Angelina Jolie’s character in any movie she’s ever done.
By the third date, we had already planned a trip together: Thailand for three weeks. It didn’t matter whether either of us was uncomfortable with the idea; we wouldn’t dare admit it. We fed each other’s rebellious sides. Our families weren’t from the same country, language, or faith. Every decision we made had to be an adventure.
She probably got fired from four jobs while we were together, most often for talking back to her superiors. She was very entitled, but stood up for herself, and every time she lost a job, she’d find another—something more interesting and exciting.
For a while, she was working at a small cafe in Toronto that was a front for the illegal gambling machines kept in the back. She was paid cash to serve coffee, but mainly to keep an eye on the special clientele and watch out for cops. She fawned over work stories of simply sitting by the window, reading the newspaper, drinking a cappuccino, kissed by the sun, as regulars greeted her and then headed to the back room to lose money.
We explored the world, life, and ourselves together. She was the first person to tell me “the world needs to hear your ideas,” but at the same time, she saw my infancy celebrity as annoying. She didn’t want to wait an hour after my shows as I took pictures with fans; it bored her and made her restless.
Our relationship worked when our priorities matched, and that usually centered around our shared desire for adventure, but also the stability of having each other. Our phone conversations lasted for hours, even after a year of dating, because we were both curious about ideas and subjects beyond ourselves.
When I spoke to her in person, she stared at me with those dangerous eyes, scanning my face, twitching her little rodent nose, as if trying to interpret abstract art. She told me I had the most beautiful forehead and that no other girls were allowed to see it.
When we fought, it was intense. She was the first woman I’d ever met who said things she didn’t mean when she argued.
“Oh, you fucked up now! This is over! You fucked this up so bad, you’re going to regret this for the rest of your life!”
And I would sit there, with tears filling my eyes, trying to figure out how I’d fucked it up so bad. Hours later she would console me and tell me she didn’t mean it.
Except the times she did.
People would compliment me on her, as if she were a trophy wife, and I remember not knowing how to reply when someone told me how beautiful she was.
Thanks, she gets it from me.
Thanks, but I think I’m better looking.
Umm … thanks.
Obviously! That’s why I’m with her!
One dude even told me that he was proud to see a fellow Singh[1] with such an attractive woman, because it was a “good look.”
Although I dismissed a lot of the comments, they affected me, and I began to think I was with someone who was out of my league, and I couldn’t do better. Her beauty was intimidating, and it magnified my insecurities.
As our arguments got harder and my list of insecurities got longer, I felt the relationship going downhill. She always noticed me, until she didn’t, and the moments she didn’t (often on purpose), I would boil in frustration.
Our first breakup broke me.
I stayed in bed for two days, trying to figure out how I could continue existing without her in my life. She was all I knew, and the best part about me. When she left, so did the life I dreamed about, along with my self-worth and any enthusiasm I held for the future. I cried and blamed others for creating a wedge between us. I refused to speak to anyone, while simultaneously soaking up any pity that came my way. News of our breakup spread quickly through the school where I worked, including my pity party reaction to it.
When I got back to work, a colleague sat me down and gave me The Chat: “I’m divorced with two kids, and watching my marriage crumble was the hardest thing I ever had to endure. I’m not the only person at this school who’s gone through hardships, and neither are you. But one thing we have to remember is, the world doesn’t stop for our tragedies; it keeps moving, and we have to keep moving with it. Stop handling your tragedies like a child, and deal with them like an adult. Adults show up for work, children stay in bed.”
Those words didn’t affect me immediately, but they were a sleeper cell. It wasn’t until after another on-again, off-again drama and we broke up a final time that I started to accept what it meant to “deal with” this.
She had left Toronto to teach English in South Korea, and a few weeks later she messaged me to say things were too heavy and she didn’t want to be in a relationship anymore. I didn’t crumble in heartbreak like I had so many times in the past. I went to work and had a productive day.
It wasn’t easy, but it was necessary. I channeled my frustration over her into my work and let the pain live for a purpose beyond me.
There were still tears, hard nights, and the urge to send her messages, but I didn’t let those things affect my day-to-day life this time. I handled it like an adult.
If you had you asked me, even six months before, to think about losing her, I would have contemplated suicide. I had no faith in myself or my ability to move past any heartbreak. What changed when we broke up for the last time? Maybe it was a little of my seeing it coming, a little bit of my understanding that I couldn’t do much since she was halfway around the world, and a little bit of my being relieved that the rollercoaster ride was over.
I realized what I was capable of surviving. I’d already experienced so much pain in our numerous other breakups, and I made it through because I took my colleague’s advice to take things one day at a time. None of us knows how strong we are until being strong is the only option we have left. We spend so much of our lives avoiding discomfort that we don’t realize that in those uncomfortable situations, our best selves emerge.
I had feared for months that I would lose her, but that vision of how bad the breakup would feel existed only in my head. The reality was different. Our worst fears are rarely realized, and even when they are, we’re still standing.
Just as there’s a day following the good news, there’s always a day after the bad news. As my colleague said, “The world doesn’t stop for our tragedies,” and neither should we. So, when you’ve cried all you can cry and complained all you can complain, remember there’s going to be another day after all of that, and you just have to keep going to see it.
I’d love to tell you that was the end of our story, but with her, there may never be an end. As I got more popular, ironically, I became more of a global citizen than she did, and our paths crossed a few times. We agreed to keep each other company in Bali, I crashed on her couch in Birmingham, she brought friends to watch my show in Dubai; and when I was living in Los Angeles and becoming more of a mainstream character in the world of entertainment, she called me to say, “What the fuck are you doing? You’re above this, your purpose is more important than being famous.”
