personal essay: emma friary
Reading Untamed Made Me Break Up with my Boyfriend
Will we be brave enough to unlock ourselves?
Will we be brave enough to set ourselves free?
I got the memoir Untamed for my birthday from my mother after seeing everyone reading it. I was curious to see what the hype was as I was an avid reader but tended to stay away from memoirs and generally anything that seemed so… girly? I hated picking up a novel that seemed intriguing and was just all fluff but what I got was so much deeper than I could have imagined. When I shut the book, I looked around at my apartment, messy from the quarantine, filled with belongings that had little meaning to me, and my boyfriend sitting at my kitchen table which had been taken up by his work things.
No one expected quarantine to continue for so long. My birthday was during week 10 and I was mentally exhausted. I had watched everything worth watching on Netflix, read all the books I wanted to, laid on my couch wondering when I would finally snap and go crazy. Then I read Untamed and it finally happened.
Two questions were presented that had me think. The first was the question of who I am. I felt this was a question I had always known and chose to give it the same amount of thought I usually did- a brief skimming to make sure I was still aligned with my goals and living life being authentic. Okay, looked good. The second question brought me to a screeching halt. The type of people you want to surround yourself with.
I have a great support system. I love my family and my friends make me so happy. But were they all the type of people I wanted to surround myself with? This was a difficult question because I loved all of my friends and they were fantastic at always being there for me. But so many were married or in long term relationships and everyone around me was having babies and buying houses. I knew instantly after reading this that it was the last thing I wanted at 24. I wanted to run from it, physically, as far as I could go to find people who were not yet ready to be tied down.
I texted my mom and told her I wanted to move to various different cities and put myself out there in a new way. For her, this was a sign I had lost it. But I had loved traveling and was planning more travels for the summer before we knew COVID-19 was going to sweep across the world. I wanted to try somewhere new because I didn’t want to stay in the same small city in New England forever. Every time I drove in a snowstorm, I prayed to God that if I could just get home without killing myself, I would never drive in the snow again. This happened for four winters.
I told my boyfriend of this desire to move and he was instantly supportive. He started pulling up jobs in different areas, we looked at apartments, discussed when it would be safe to try to fly out to some of these places to test it out. But even when making these plans, I still didn’t feel like it was quite right. We had talked about moving in with each other but after reading Untamed, I wasn’t sure I even wanted that. One day I broke down and cried on my couch, just saying how absolutely done I was with working from home and not being out in the sunshine. He encouraged me to leave and go out and I used it as an opportunity to socially distance with family and friends I hadn’t seen in months.
The more I left, the more anxious I began to feel. I felt tethered to my apartment because I didn’t want to leave him alone. Whenever I had left in the past, it wasn’t for long because I still wanted to treat him like a guest in my home. Now that I was getting out and going places, I didn’t want to have to come home and worry about him. I felt a certain obligation to be with him outside of work so we weren’t constantly working together but each night ended with us sitting on the couch, absently sharing a blanket and talking about things not worth remembering. I could not sit there any longer and wonder if this was going to be what it was like when we were older. When we had an apartment together, a house, children, would we sit here and talk about nothing watching tv that once had us cracking up, now barely smiling?
The feeling didn’t go away. We were both frustrated with each other: me with his anxiety about possibly being sick when I thought it was his allergies and his frustration with hating the walls of my apartment that seemed to close in on us. His resentment of my space made me hate being there even more and wanting more than anything to leave, which I didn’t want to do because I didn’t want to leave him there.
I saw pictures of people from before quarantine going out dancing and hanging out in bars with their friends. I had no single friends, no group of girls to go out with. My boyfriend was not the type to want to put himself out there dancing, too awkward to go to a bar unless it was with one of his guy friends. I felt old, like I was no longer in my 20’s but instead an unknown age where you are forced to sit on your couch every night and worry about things like forgetting to submit your Census and if your freezer wasn’t freezing your veggies at the temperature you wanted.
“Will we be brave enough to set ourselves free?” ends a chapter in the memoir when the writer sees the love of her life. I wasn’t sure what part of myself needed to be let free until I realized I was holding myself back from traveling and experiencing life on my own. I had been in nonstop relationships since the age of 18, hopping from serious relationship to serious relationship. I didn’t realize how much it was hindering me until I decided I wanted to be single. I had no idea how to do so. I hated watching the cheesy break up movies where the girls ‘found themselves’ and went on a soul searching journey.
But damn if I all of a sudden didn’t want to do exactly that.
I had been afraid to move in by myself. I thought I would only be able to move into a space if I had someone to do it with because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to afford it, that I wouldn’t be safe, that I would be lonely. Honestly, I was afraid to be alone.
Being alone wasn’t a fear I had growing up. I enjoyed escaping into books, music, and writing, solitary activities. I had friends but was unafraid to shut people out if I was wronged and did not think it was repairable. Yet as an adult, I never wanted to be alone. I jumped from serious relationship to serious relationship, telling my friends and family each time, “This ones the one!” as they gave me a thumbs up and then asked what I was doing with someone who just didn’t have their shit together.
I realized I wanted to figure myself out and where I wanted to go from here. I ended my relationship, sad and a bit unsure if it was the right choice for me. But I had gone from feeling happy and light every day to feeling weighed down and exhausted. I felt like I had no days off when I was spending every waking moment with someone who, while great, was still a person who had bad days, would get frustrated, and generally not make me as happy as I once remembered being.
You don’t have to break up with your significant other to figure out your own identity but I needed to be able to take a step back and ask why I was making the decisions that I was. Why did I get an apartment on my own? To have freedom and independence. Why did I get a full time job at a young age? To have monetary freedom and independence. Why did I love to travel and read and listen to music? To be constantly growing and learning. Why did I go back to school to pursue my degree after taking a year off? To grow, meet people, and make meaningful connections while learning about my passion.
I was making all these decisions and not consciously realizing it. How could these two halves of myself exist?! One was working so hard to take care of me as the other was blindly walking and occasionally sabotaging that plan. But with just a small amount of time between my breakup and this article being published, I have written more than I had in months. My journaling has been the highest it's ever been because instead of telling my every thought to someone, I have to consciously put it down and reflect on the way I feel. I started talking to old friends I hadn’t realized I missed so much. I found new shows I had previously skipped because I now had the alone time to sit and enjoy something that only I would enjoy.
Deciding to be single was not instantaneous but instead grew over weeks because I knew I would be better off on that kind of journey alone. Even so, I fall for people every day because I see the way people have grown in the pandemic and the kindness and unity that people share in times where things are hard (in case you live under a rock, #blacklivesmatter). I was told recently I’m a romantic and I don’t know why it shocked me. I suppose I had never allowed myself to see that part of me for fear of rejection or thinking of myself as being silly. But I feel like I love more now than I had before because I can focus the energy inward on myself. Because taking care of myself makes it so much easier for the people who love me to find that peace and direct that love back at themselves.
I am happy I decided to take this time for myself at 24 instead of later in life. It is never too late to be the person it is that you want to be but the best time to start is always now. There is never a bad time to start worshipping yourself and doing all the things you said you’ve wanted to do. Now I get to continue on that journey of self discovery and I will continue to be excited and grateful to be able to become more and more of myself.
about the writer: emma friary
Emma Friary is an undergraduate at FSU planning on pursuing her Masters through the school. She draws inspiration from her travels and experiences as well as her favorite novels. Emma’s goal is to publish a book and when we are free to do so again, she looks forward to returning to Europe.
