A Series Of Unfortunate Events

The following chronology of stories are true, personal and condensed accounts of a series of unfortunate events called My Love Life. I, Afiya J. John, of sound mind and somewhat sound body, do swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. 

The events surrounding my tragic love life began around June 2007. I was in fifth grade and senior prom was approaching. My parents told me I wasn’t allowed to go because Prom is for high school, not for 10-year-olds. Of course, being the obedient, precocious kid that I was, ran with this and acted like I didn’t want to go, even though I really did. Maybe about a week before the Prom, the school had Yearbook Day, where seniors could go around to different classes and sign each other's yearbooks. A young man from another class - whom I'd never spoken to before – shyly came up to me and asked me to sign his yearbook. Unsure of what to say, I agreed and wrote something generic along the lines of "Good luck in middle school," and signed it as "anonymous." Puzzled, the boy looked at the message, said thank you and walked away. A few minutes later, he came back, looked me in the eye, took a deep breath, and asked me to go to Prom with him. Being the asshole that I was (and, truthfully still am), I sat there and laughed in his face. This, I hypothesize, was the moment that a curse was put on my romantic life. 

     Flash-forward to middle school. I went to a school in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn for gifted and talented students. Now, it's important to note that I'm from East Flatbush in Brooklyn, which is a predominantly West-Indian and African-American area. Coney Island is the total opposite. Going to a predominantly white school was hard enough, but it was even harder for a hopeless romantic like myself. For starters, the boys at this school were nowhere near having a progressive mindset and were not trying to be down with anybody's "swirl." Aside from that, my looks were less-than-stellar. I had a terrible perm that would grow out two weeks after I got it. I didn’t have a closet full of Hollister, Abercrombie & Fitch and Ed Hardy like everyone else. My clothes came from the Gap and Old Navy, which I deemed uncool once I realized that I was the only one wearing those brands religiously. Then, tragedy struck in seventh grade: I had to get braces. However, getting braces was nothing compared to the real social tragedy in eighth grade: being diagnosed with scoliosis and having to wear a God-awful back brace. To say the least, middle school wasn’t the place where I would find my Prince Charming. 

     High school. I attended Edward R. Murrow High School, which was a lot more culturally diverse than my middle school. This was great as far as making friends and fitting in goes, but most of the guys at this school were gay, douchebags, taken, or had faces for radio. By the third week of school, it was apparent to me that I probably wasn’t going to find my soulmate here either. I was a theater major (again), and I was the only Black girl in my class. I had a crush on Howard Bryan*. He was tall, had hazel eyes, and shared the same music and literary tastes as me (this was all information that I'd acquired by stalking his Facebook). I thought we were perfect for each other, but apparently so did all the white girls in my class. I mustered up enough courage to ask him for Spanish homework or something (this was my way of hinting to him that I had a crush on him) which did not go over well. I eventually let my crush go and eventually had to accept the reality that romance was just not in the cards for me at this school. Why didn’t I just sign that kid's yearbook in fifth grade? 

     As previously mentioned, between the ages of 11-17, no one took any kind of real interest in me, so I started college thinking that I was going to find the love of my life. Until I met the young men at my school. There were three suitors who took interest in me my freshman year. One was awkward and shy – not my type, one was too forward and gave me weird pet names – definitely not my type, and one was just trying to get in to my pants. Absolutely not my type. The one person that I did have feelings for was not interested in me and ended the relationship between my ex-best friend and I, but that’s a story for another time. 

    Moving on to sophomore year, a young man named Ryan* made it clear that he thought I was like, so totally hot, or whatever terms men use to describe women they find attractive. Ryan was a football player – the quintessential kind that every girl has a crush on and every guy secretly wishes they were. I played along and flirted with Ryan, laughing at his stupid jokes and flirtatious comments that admittedly made me blush. Ryan checked off almost every box on my imaginary "list" of things I wanted in an ideal partner. Even my friends noticed that we had chemistry between us, but I couldn’t make that move with him. Ryan had a girlfriend. A very muscular girlfriend who was captain of the dance team - and who would kick my ass. Besides that, Ryan suffered from Joey Tribbiani Syndrome: sleeping with multiple women and then acting like they no longer exist. I didn’t want that to happen to me, especially because Ryan would have been my first everything – and I mean everything. Though it hurt my heart, I had to let my "fling" with the campus version of Odell Beckham, Jr. go.

     About a month later, I was sitting outside of my friend's dorm building when I met Matt*. Matt was cute, funny, and actually normal, compared to the other young men who had tried to court me. We talked as if we knew each other for years. We didn’t get to exchange contact info as he stepped away for a minute and I left with my friend. We didn’t get each other's names or anything. A week later, I got a Facebook friend request from him. I accepted, excited, but I was too afraid to make any moves because I didn’t know what to say. Time went on and he never made a move either, so I just decided to let go and let God. Then a plot twist came – the very next semester we were in the same class. I'm very shy, so I didn’t know what to say to him and the class only met on Wednesdays. I was still interested in him and decided to give things another go, to finally make that move. I asked him if he got the notes from the last class. He said yes and offered to send me a study guide that he made. I gave him my number and told him to send it to me that way, but to my surprise, he emailed it to me and declined to text me. At this point, I decided it was time to let this go as well. It was truly over now. I'd missed my chance. I was transferring out of that school anyway, so it wasn’t like I'd ever have to see him again.

     As I transferred schools and started my junior year, the pattern of men trying to court me and me consistently shutting them down for whatever reason continued. And then I met Chance*. Chance was stylish, funny, sweet and attractive. My friends knew him and would always say "hi" to him. He spoke to me once at a party and showed great interest in me. I messaged him on Twitter over the summer before senior year. We exchanged numbers and hit it off immediately. Then, out of nowhere, he stopped texting back. Literally out of nowhere, right in the middle of the conversation we were having. Did I say something wrong? Did I make a grammatical error in one of my texts? What the hell happened? I still, to this day, don’t have answer for why things ended with Chance. It also didn’t help that I would always see him on campus and he would frequently interact with my friends.

I graduated from college in May, and as one can imagine, nothing stellar has happened in my life since then. I'm now 22 years old. I've never been kissed, never been on a date, and I've never been in a relationship. At this point, I've grown out of that waiting-for-my-prince-to-come mindset and I've just decided to live my best, truest life. I don't know when, or where, or how, or even if it's going to happen for me, but I sure hope that my first real love/relationship will make up for the last 22 years, and that this curse will somehow be lifted. Maybe I just need to kiss a frog or something.

*Names have been changed to protect the innocent