'I'm All In'

A friend said to me recently what I think might just be the most romantic phrase. ‘I’m All In’

We were walking back from one of our impromptu sea swims, and I offhandedly mentioned a part of my story she had never heard before. We realised how far the two of us had come as people, and how similar our stories are. Weird that. Someone who has become a really good friend in the last year, only now starting to see how similar we are despite being at such different points. She’s moving country now, and it was a wake-up call to see her path happening in real time.

I started asking her how she knew her husband was the one. Or at least when she knew she wanted him. Amid a couple years of, at best, half-hearted dating, situationships, and almost-but-not-quite connections I was looking for someone to tell me the story of love. It's like waiting for rain in a long summer, not quite a drought (just yet). And she said, it was simple, they had been dating for a while, and they both knew they loved each other, but he sat her down and said 'I'm All In' he didnt know what that meant, what it looked like, or what she wanted for the next few decades of her life, but he knew he wanted to be around for them.

For the last year, I've been saying no more than I've been saying yes, bored of being half-liked, fancied with a caveat, or admired in context. It's an easy way to spend your time, and sure there is fun to be had, but at the end of the day, I want to be wanted. To have someone sit me down and say, I'm All In. The idea of that sounds amazing. Not, if the logistics work, or for the next couple months, or whilst they figure themselves out. I want All In.

I'm not frustrated, yet. Which I feel I should clarify. This desire to be wanted is not new or original, in fact, it feels like it is currently everywhere in society. And it can morph quite quickly into a frustration and rage that at its core is a form of desperation. I'm not there, yet. This want to be wanted, is still romantic to me, still a story waiting to happen. It's a story I'm seeing play out in friends' lives, some much older and in much more complicated situations than I. And I'm reassured that this wonderful romantic event could happen at any time, and I have no interest in rushing it.

I think that in my case, and I can't speak for anyone else, I'm having the kinds of relationships I need to be having right now. There are other priorities, things I want to achieve and do, that would genuinely be hindered by needed to prioritise someone else. I'm enough of a procrastinator to know that if I was given an excuse, any excuse, right now to stop or pause I would loose a momentum in my life and career I never saw coming. I have what seems like a whole town cheering me on and expecting great things, I have no intention of dissapointing them. To be swept of my feet right now would be incredibly innconveinent. In the same breath I can say I am at my heart a romantic person, I love Love, and Poetry, and Art, and Passion. So to pause the pursuit of them, may become a choice I regret down the line. But maybe not?

My friend and her husband have moved away now, to another country. She misses us, and we miss her. But it's only two trains. I'll hop on a train the minute I can to go to her, and when our time is spent I'll come home. She is someone I see in my life for the rest of it but despite that at some point I will have to leave, but her husband will stay. The man who said 'All In' will stay. And I won't lie, it is reassuring to know she is loved in this way. I hope one day I am too.