Stop Running and Settle Down

by Tanisha Everett

Check out her blog here

That is the line I always hear from family members while traipsing around the world. They assume that my nomadic lifestyle is my running away from my life and creating a family, but in actuality it is my being free. I have always been somewhat of a rebel. In my life every time I have tried to fall in line it always ended in disaster and I have always ended up miserable.

I have never had much luck in romantic relationships. I tend to pack up and leave whatever city or country I am in whenever the mood hits or the opportunity presents itself. This attitude of not setting down roots has probably been the cause of my not having had a true long-term relationship in my 34 years of living. However, I do not believe that is true. I did spend the last seven years in Texas before moving to Italy and I had only four dates and one “relationship” that I would like to call chaos during that time.

The ‘relationship’ was a long distance one with an Italian guy I met online who I fell in love with because he was highly intelligent although in the beginning I had my doubts. His profile picture on FB gave him an aura of being ghetto and I do not like ghetto at all. But once I got to know him he proved to be very knowledgeable on different subjects, ambitious and he taught me a few things. Despite this great quality he ended up being extremely self-absorbed and quite frankly delusional.

He had a one-night stand with an ex-girlfriend to feed his fragile Cancerian ego and got her pregnant. At first I wigged out but I truly believed, at the time, that he was my soul-mate so I eventually decided to stick it out. We all make mistakes. However, what proceeded afterwards put the icing on the cake.

He flew me to see him in Italy for a week so we could finally meet in person after 6 months of video-chatting, talking on the phone and endless romantic emails. A week before flying out he tells me that I would be introduced as his friend from the States (WTF?). At which point my heart sank. I was not suffering from low self-esteem however, I felt like something was wrong with me because everyone kept telling me that something was because I was 33 years old and had never had a long term relationship. So I went against my initial reaction of f*ck you and hung in there longer.

When I arrived in Italy, there was a connection but the sex was bad, the situation was awkward and I left feeling worse. On top of all that I had lost 40lbs and my ex constantly harped on my weight and I looked damn good. I had not been that small in ten years. After two more months of him making decisions that affected me without taking my pain into consideration I decided to shag another Italian and dump him. It’s a damn shame that I ended up with the stereotypical black male in an Italian man. I felt like Carrie Bradshaw with Petrovsky in Paris in this relationship.
What I have learned from the situation is to never ignore your intuition, never settle, and never take sh*t from anyone. It is ok to compromise but not to the point of compromising who you are at the core of your being. Never date insecure men, they are lethal to your psyche. It is ok, to be 34 and to have never been in a long-term relationship. It does not necessarily mean that something is wrong with you. It just means you are different and it will take a special man to come along on your journey with you or maybe there are other things fulfilling you in your life. This does not mean I do not desire companionship because I do. But at the moment it is something I do not have so why worry about it?

My whole life I saw and heard the stories of the women in my family and all the sacrifices they made for their children and the men in their lives to end up with broken hearts and pillows filled with tears and after that eight month fiasco, I knew that I would not end up like them.

I will be 35 in two months I have never really had a long-term relationship. And I have come to the conclusion that it’s ok. I rarely date because I intimidate men because I have zero tolerance for bullsh*t—especially after this last chaotic episode in my life– I know what I want, I am a bit of a nomad, I love adventure, I require mind blowing—I’ve just created a stalker–sex (none of that selfish, I’ll-just-get-myself-off-f*ck-you-literally bullsh*t) and I refuse to be a martyr or a victim.

I have recently given up really. There are days I cry about it, but at this point, I am just getting on with my life. I have come to the conclusion that I am wonderfully broken. That is where I am. Maybe when I am 40 I will panic, but for now I have to just go with it, not settle for anything less than the best and be happy with who I am no matter what others including those in my family think about me. As far as running is concern, I am running across the globe in search of as many adventures as I can find and settling for only the best life for me. At the moment I am looking for “real love, can’t live without each other love,” and maybe that love does not exist in our microwave, fast food culture but until I find it or die whichever comes first, I will not settle or set down roots, I will continue to live my life like the adventure that it is.