Romance on the Road -- Istanbul, Turkey

Romance on the Road

It’s Valentine’s Day. I’m listening to Carla Bruni’s “You Belong to Me” and pining for... for nothing in particular. Just... taking a moment to appreciate the sensation of pining. Sometimes it feels meaningful to want – even if there’s nothing attached to the feeling of “want”. Wanting makes life more serious. Serious makes life more important. Important makes my ego feel very fine indeed.

This time last year, I was organizing a romantic partner yoga workshop with a fellow yoga teacher in Colorado. At this moment, I was probably dipping strawberries in organic chocolate or rolling my 47^th nut/date ball in raw, fairtrade cocoa powder. This year, I’m sitting in the spare room of the Beylikduzu flat and my plans for the evening include teaching English to a group of airport technicians in Florya. I know I won’t be receiving cards this afternoon and there will be no romantic dinners this evening, but I may very well take myself out for a plate of peculiarly firm Mado ice cream. And as I’m primarily indifferent to Valentine’s Day, I won’t be the single sulking single amidst crowds of kissing couples. No, I’ll be the contemplative single who is licking her ice cream fork and wondering why more countries don’t serve ice cream on plates with forks and knives. 

In the States, Valentine’s Day held a mild curiosity about whom might use the holiday as an excuse to send me flowers – but as there will be no flowers delivered to Turkey, even my meager curiosity is squelched. I'll use all that extra energy to more thoroughly contemplate the firmness of my ice cream.

The song has changed. Now it’s Lenny Kravitz’s “I Belong to You.”

Although I’m not at all attached to February the 14^th and generally do my best to let it be a day without any special meaning tagged on, I thought I would follow the media’s example and exploit it. As as an excuse to write about romance. Romance on the road.

I’m an incredibly romantic person.

I’m the kind of lady who wakes up an hour early to make breakfast and prefer to eat my gluten-free nutella crepes half-naked in bed. I knit scarves, plan picnics, give back massages and ask my partner to teach me some simple chords on the guitar so we can play duets. I’m a sucker for long walks, spooning, holding hands, drinking wine and sitting on the backseat of motorcycles with my arms wrapped around a waist. I love letting people know why I think they’re wonderful, how they affect me and I feel most alive when I’m most vulnerable.

Being in the presence of someone who has the power to hurt but chooses to love makes me want to be alive and I used to heedlessly give this power away because I was so anxious to feel this profound and beautiful trust. I lived without boundaries. I treated my heart the way Jakob (a host from Madrid) treated couchsurfing.

“Hi, I’m Jakob.”

“Hi, I’m Aimee.”

“Hi, Aimee! Here’s the fridge. Feel free to help yourself, okay? Here’s your bed, here’re the blankets and this is the key to the apartment.”  

But traveling. Traveling has changed me. It has built boundaries around my free-for-all vulnerability and has completely transformed the way I view romance.

I sometimes want a boyfriend because I’m detached and just want to feel “normal”.

I sometimes want a boyfriend because I’m afraid and just want someone to take care of me.

I sometimes want a boyfriend because I’m lonely and want the right to run up and hug someone from behind. To watch someone sleep. To feel someone’s breath. To hear the water running in the shower and know that it is my god given right as girlfriend to step in there and smother him with loofa bubbles and sloppy shower kisses.

But most of the time, I just don’t care. I move too fast, too far too often to develop the romantic familiarity I occasionally crave. I would leave myself open regardless, hoping that I might meet someone with whom I could share a brief but meaningful love affair – but I’ve encountered too many people who misinterpret “long-term traveler” as “short-term fling”.

And “short-term fling” is not usually the place wherein one finds “emotional vulnerability”. Because I have become painfully aware of this misinterpretation, I am now overly cautious about men who appear interested in me. In my experience, we generally don’t want the same thing.

I sometimes feel that what I want out of romance isn’t an option for someone who lives this vagabond lifestyle. In my experience, most men who want emotional connection want it long-term. Most who want short-term just want the physical – which is all well and good. Just not for me. I can’t have one without the other and I’m not interested in the physical before the emotional.

It’s Valentine’s Day. I’m alone, but not lonely. It would be rather nice to pack a bottle of wine and a block of cheese into the mountains, throw down a ratty blanket and have a picnic under the stars with a person with whom I’m utterly vulnerable, but –

-- but that’s not a part of my life right now. Perhaps it won’t be a part of my life for a long time. Perhaps it will never be a part of my life. This doesn’t mean I can’t be happy or that I’m somehow missing out.

As a friend put it, I’m in a romantic relationship with the globe. Even though he’s rather difficult to hug from behind and doesn’t care for breakfast in bed, he seems to cherish my vulnerability.

The song has changed. Now it's "Baby I'm Yours" by Arctic Monkeys. 

And I’m excited to see where that vulnerability takes me.