When I was in my early to mid-twenties, I had an on-going secret internet affair with a Canadian. For months, he was the source of my fantasies and gave me some glimmer of hope that I could escape the misery that was living in my mother’s house as a first year teacher, making $24,000 a year and struggling with serious self-doubt and obesity. I’d never had a professional haircut or style; all of my clothes were from goodwill or wal-mart or some equivalent. I felt awkward and strange and huge all of the time. And then I’d go into my mother’s home office to work on my online classes that I was taking toward my state certificate, and I’d check my email and find some beautifully composed email about how incredibly sexy I was. In my inbox, I was beautiful and witty and capable. Of course I lied to him because I would never meet him, so I created an alternate self– it was me, but as if everything had gone well instead of…how it really went. In my inbox, I worked out, struggled with my career, was an expert dresser and had weekend plans. I was lonely because I lived in a small town and was an introvert, not because I was terrified of other people and hated being in my body. I created a self, and he believed in that person, and then I did too. And then I worked on trying to be that person.

Not long into our affair– or whatever you’d call it– he said that he needed to find someone real. He wanted to find a Canadian version of me, and he set up a profile to go shopping for a wife. I helped him write the text, and I helped him screen his ‘candidates’ and eventually, he found someone and married her, and then they had two children. We continued to email one another for a while, but after he found someone, the messages were shorter, then very short, then non-existent until one final email. He told me that I should write, that my messages to him were some of his favorite parts of his day, and that I had all of this stuff in my head that it seemed like I was saving for someone, and I should give that stuff to everyone in the form of essays or short fiction or maybe just a blog.

I was already secretly blogging, but that is not the point.

His encouragement wasn’t the only factor in my decision to quit my job and go to grad school for writing, but it was a major factor. And the idea that someday I’d meet him and he’d be wowed by my beauty wasn’t the only reason that I started running and lost like 80 pounds, but it was a good early-morning motivator to get my ass out of bed and run, like I was running toward sex with someone who loved me, and that would prove to be the answer to all of my misery. I didn’t believe it, but I believed in it.

Now that I am older, I know that no one else will make me happy. The desire to be my best self has to come from some place inside me. When I was younger, I believed in the future. Now, I believe in the present,  which, at the moment, finds me wrestling with exactly the same emotions I felt when I was younger, except this time, I have no fantasy that lets me escape. It sucks. I am not sure that I am capable of happiness.