looking for love ♡

reflecting on love throughout my life, from age 16 to 26

When I was younger, my days were spent getting lost in John Green books and scrolling through Tumblr and watching couples on YouTube like Zoella Sugg and Alfie Deyes and Will Darbyshire and Arden Rose, inadvertently forming ideas of what ‘love’ was supposed to look like. To teenage Tatum, love was Will and Arden wearing white shirts with cuffed sleeves that said “lol ur not (insert other person’s name here)” in black, bold Times New Roman, and it was Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters and Miles Halter and Alaska Young, and it was the oversaturated photos of — for the lack of a better adjective — hot couples holding hands and lipstick-kissed love notes. It was friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, British-YouTubers-who-claimed-they-didn’t-like-each-other-like-that-but-are-now-married-with-two-kids, and everything in between. It was unattainable for someone like me, a 16 year old who spent her teenage years engulfed in Y/A fiction novels, the dark depths of the internet, and unrealistic expectations.

My first semblance of a “relationship” — please note the keyword here is semblance and it feels silly to even consider it a “relationship” — was during my junior year of high school. I was un-kissed and crushless, insecure with a craving for male validation. I claimed that I wasn’t like the other girls, although I did have hair weighing down my back that I woke up at 5:45AM to straighten every day and I bought and wore whatever was trending among the halls of Monte Vista High School, which, at the time, happened to be that one flowy Free People dress that was far too long on the short girls like myself, light brown Steve Madden combat boots with long zippers down the back deeming the shoelaces as useless, accessorized with none other than Camelback water bottles and EOS lip balm. My hobbies included being the publicity officer of the drama club, fangirling over musicians and content creators, making YouTube videos that nobody at school knew about, and by some turn of events I became friends with a boy in my grade who had recently broken up with his long term girlfriend.

We bonded over liking classic rock and Eminem, because — if I may remind you — I wasn’t like the other girls, and then like the five girls that proceeded me, I became what is referred to as a rebound — his rebound — and we went on a total of four or five dates, give or take. Chipotle runs after school (which is why I firmly hold the opinion that a burrito is the worst possible choice of food for a date), ice skating with my best friend (which mainly consisted of my best friend and I skating while he sat on the bleachers because he had two left feet), and two BART trips to San Francisco, walking from Embarcadero station to the Pier 39 as my friends, ten feet away, giggled at the sight of us holding hands. It wasn’t love — it was hardly anything at all — but I can’t blame my younger self for being so completely and utterly convinced that it would ever turn in to something more. He gave me a millionth of a millimeter, and I took it miles.

A month and a half later of constant Snapchatting (it was 2015’s main form of teenage communication, okay), rides home from school in his silver Ford Mustang, and changing my walking route between second and third period so that we would potentially cross paths, quickly dwindled into receiving one, two-word text from him every 2-3 business days, driving myself home from school, and getting ignored in the busy corridors. I had questions, but because I wasn’t like the other girls (and had undiagnosed anxiety) I held my tongue. I still remember it clear as day: I was in the car with my dad, we were parked in the Safeway parking lot, “Blank Space” by Taylor Swift was playing on the radio, and I received the dreaded, long-anticipated, very emotionally out-of-tune text from him right when Taylor’s pen clicked: This isn’t what I want anymore tbh, I think we should just be friends. As Taylor’s voice faded into the background, I felt the outside world crumble around me. It didn’t help that it took approximately as long as it did for him to type that text message, as it did for him to move onto the next girl on the roster. I decided to stick with daydreaming about love through books and Youtubers and maintaining a stan Twitter account for Shawn Mendes that had been on a month and a half long hiatus. Like all escapist activities tend to be, it was a safer bet.

I am about to turn 26, and I am only now coming to terms with the fact a whole decade has passed since the boyfriend I never had. Since then, I’ve had several boyfriends-I-never-had, I’ve also had two legitimate boyfriends which ended in two legitimate heartbreaks, I’ve had first and last dates with people from opposite corners of the world, I’ve been friendzoned on a third date by the means of a handwritten note, I’ve been the friend-zoner (sorry, you know who you are), I’ve had two guys confess their love to me while in the middle of long term relationships (not sorry, you know who you are and I’m glad your ex-girlfriends eventually did too), I’ve been projected onto and blocked when I didn’t meet expectations, I’ve been ghosted, I’ve been the ghoster (I know, I hate myself for it too), I’ve went on a date with a penpal which turned into a failed talking stage via snail mail, I’ve met the right people at the wrong time before believing that if it is the right person it is the right time, I’ve had silly crushes on baristas, I’ve had friends accidentally crush on me, I’ve accidentally crushed on friends, I’ve admitted to liking someone on the Ellen show and then realized perhaps I did not like him when he serenaded me in Downtown Danville, I’ve been approached by strange men at bars and responded by physically running away, I’ve had Hinge matches result in friendships, I’ve had the pleasure of relating to “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “good 4 u,” I’ve put myself through horribly awkward first dates, I’ve gone on a date with someone I met on Tik Tok, I’ve had a platonic hangout with a friend who thought we were on a date, and somehow, by the grace of the algorithmic Hinge Gods who soar above Europe, I finally found my person around 1 year and 8 months ago. All it took was ten years of not knowing what the fuck I was doing and somehow managing to figure it out in not doing so.

I met Nielsan when I was in Italy. Sort of. Not really. I was in Italy, he was in England, and we were both on Hinge. It sounds more romantic to say we met while I was in Italy, so I’m going to keep presenting it as such. I had just endured quite possibly the craziest travel experience of my life (TLDR; my friends and I had booked an Airbnb in the middle of the Italian countryside, our train left us in a ghost town, after attempting to hitchhike and getting on a random bus where the driver refused to let us off, we wound up in another empty town, had anxiety attacks and panic bought groceries, Sophia used her broken Italian to ask a motel front desk lady to find us a taxi, the taxi driver — our hero — spoke German and Italian and could not find our Airbnb because it only existed in coordinates and the bridge to get to it was permanently closed, he dropped us off after driving 3 miles down a dirt road, the Airbnb host was mildly racist towards me, the nearest restaurant was an hour long walk through pitch black woods, we trekked for a well deserved, massive, and very tasty five euro pizza and tiramisu, and then three days later we cut our stay short because we had no car, it was over 100 degrees, and to get a bottle of water, we had to walk two hours in the sun wearing sandals. I guess this was not a TLDR; but I hope you can understand how exhausted I was on this particular day) and, naturally, as one does after a stressful day of female travels in the Italian countryside, I decided to wind down by checking Hinge. My location had switched to the town I was in which had a population of 3,501, so I dragged the pin back to London, and dropped it there. 8.92 million people sounded like better odds to me. I had received a message from a guy called Nielsan that read “that is the DREAM fridge” (one of my prompts was that my biggest flex was having a Smeg refrigerator, followed by a photo of me next to said Smeg. God I miss her). I scrolled through his profile: a photo with a dog, a mirror selfie, a camping photo. He looked cute and he, like me, dreams of a Smeg fridge! I accepted his message. We talked about cooking utensils (green flag), I learned he used to work at a bakery (even greener flag), and we decided that upon my arrival to London, we would bake an Ottolenghi lemon-blueberry loaf cake together (he picked the recipe - greenest of all flags).

I actually met Nielsan weeks after getting back to London, tanned and traumatized by my viaggi intensi. We met at a pub, I wore smock dress layered with a white longsleeve and a sparkly ‘222’ charm necklace, he wore a navy blue Dickies shirt, gray shorts, and a tote bag, and we talked through smiles that never seemed to fade away, even to this day. We walked across the street to Alladin’s Cave, a warehouse of half-vintage things, half “who would spent their hard earned Great British Pound on this” things (they had a life sized cutout of Kourtney Kardashian wearing a bikini), I secretly took my first BeReal, and we flipped through dusty German art books. We baked the lemon-blueberry cake together, I was cautious of not being too much of a backseat baker on the first date, I was not as cautious about being in a man’s kitchen minutes after meeting him off the internet, we ate our cake and sipped white wine and played We’re Not Really Strangers, and upon choosing a card that requested the player to make up their own question, he asked if he could kiss me, I said yes, and now, we live together. As I type this, a vase filled with the prettiest bouquet of flowers from Nielsan sits to the right of my laptop, and his Moomin tote bag sits to my left. I’m about to wrap his Valentine’s Day gifts — our second Valentine’s Day of many — and I am temporarily banned from using the storage closet because his gifts for me are hiding there. On November 1, 2022, I texted my mom “ik this probably sounds crazy but i’m pretty sure nielsan is who i’m gonna be with forever lol.” She replied, “Awwww I love this,” followed by, “I knew with dad too pretty much right away.” Then she sent me a photo of her outfit, which has become a regular occurrence these days.

Nielsan has made me realize just how uncomplicated love is. It’s easy with him. We are a match; like a puzzle comprised of two pieces. I never feel anxious towards him, because he gives me no reason to, we understand the ways we like to give and receive love, and when there is a disagreement, we fight against the situation instead of fighting against each other. My friends don’t hear about our disagreements, only my therapist and my journal, and we are constantly working to bring out the best in each other. Every day, he reminds me how beautiful I am. Even if I’m half asleep, wearing a mouth guard, and have 3 pimple patches on my face. Whenever I go to the coffee shop next door, I buy him a peanut butter M&M cookie, because those particular cookies are his favorite. If I have a problem with something, like my blinds being broken, or a loose button, he immediately searches for ways to fix it, and then fixes it. I hide little handwritten notes in his jacket pockets and bags. We send each other a text telling the other to “have a good day xxx” every morning. When we have dinner, I make sure to grab the specific fork he likes (the one with the rounded bottom), and when he’s toasting bread, he takes mine out of the toaster early (which, by the way, is a Smeg) because he knows I don’t like when sourdough is too hard to chew on. Even with the most mundane actions, like grabbing a fork or toasting bread, we show each other we care. He knows me and I know him. After a week-long trip to Los Angeles where we stayed with Daria’s Dad, he called us Dolphins, and I thought there was something so sweetly accurate about it:

What separates dating Nielsan from all of the other people in my past — whether I actually dated them or not — was the awareness that the magic of my past relationships was not some sort of metaphysical force of the universe: it was simply me offering the love I give to people, and Nielsan being the first “people” to have the capacity to reflect it back to me in his own way. At the point in my life where I started dating him, I was also preaching the idea that the “love” and “magic” is not — and should not — be exclusive to romantic relationships (thank you, Dolly Alderton). And throughout my entire life, even the times I was dreaming of Ansel Elgort as Augustus Waters, I had always shown that “magic” to those around me; I just didn’t know it.

When I took the love language test and received the flashing result that mine is gift giving, everything made sense. It was like the episode of Spongebob where all of the Spongebobs are looking for the right file, and everything is utter chaos, until one of the Spongebobs finds the right piece of paper and all peace in Bikini Bottom is restored. When I was in first grade, I learned how to use that ‘WordArt’ feature on Microsoft Word where you type something and it turns it into a 3D text, usually with a gradient running through it and a slight shadow — if you know, you know. Using the cardboard box of a family computer, I printed out pages upon pages of names in different presets, folded the pages in half, tried to staple eight sheets of paper at a time, drew lines across each page, and eventually handed all of my friends custom made “journals” at my 6th birthday party. When I was 9, I left the Bay Area to spend the summer in Hawaii with my Great Grandma and my cousins, and I decorated a giant whiteboard with an “I miss you” note to my parents. I hid it in their closet, and to this day, whenever I leave home they know that a note is waiting for them somewhere (whether written on a mirror with dry erase, Drag-Race style, or hidden in an envelope under their pillows). In college, I would make Valentine’s day goodie bags for each of my roommates (who were/are my best friends). Now that I live overseas, I always send my friends and family cards on their birthdays. Earlier today, I bought my flatmate Dan some heart shaped Bonne Maman cookies as a Valentine’s Day gift, and two nights ago, I told Nielsan my gift idea for his dad’s birthday, and Nielsan said, “You are so incredibly thoughtful it makes me want to throw up.”

This isn’t supposed to be a flex of “I’m the best because I buy my friends and family gifts,” but more of an “A-ha!” moment that I have always had love inside of me, whether or not I was in a romantic relationship. From being 6 years old and creating “journals” for my friends to turning 26 and doing the same sorts of gestures for my flatmates, friends, and partner, I have never lacked the ability to show the people in my life I care about them. And, on the reverse, the people in my life have never failed to show me they care about me in their own special ways.

Yesterday, Maddie sent me a book she thought I would like, particularly because it has to do with being in your twenties, and she knows that my personal bible is Dolly Alderton’s memoir, Everything I Know About Love. At least four times a week, my (very trendy) mom sends me a photo of her outfit, and I respond with a photo of mine. Anais, who works at Boots, surprised me with some moisturizer that she knows I use, and Gianna shipped a birthday present from Los Angeles to my flat here in London because my birthday is on Friday. Paisley, as she does every year, mailed me a birthday card, and my Dad and Tanner never fail to update the family group chat with photos of the ice cream they are eating or their hikes they go on with my mom and Achilles, an activity we used to do altogether before I moved to the U.K. The entirety of 2020, I was a mess and a half, yet my friends were there to hold my hand, listen, and be there for me every step of the way, even if they didn’t agree with my decisions. Nielsan surprised me with a coffee cup Jellycat two weeks ago, this morning Dan texted me about the book we are both reading, and Hunter and Mollie sent me letters on Christmas all the way from Washington and Tennessee. As a child, my Great Grandma sent me handwritten letters every month, and since the dawn of time, my mom always tells me I’m pretty. When I visit home, Jaymi and Adriana buy me flowers, and just now, I got a text message from Daria — a selfie of her sipping on her daily iced Chai — around 5pm, I’m expecting the same from Sophia and Maddie.

As I look above my dusty screen, I am flooded with love: a drawing of a cake Anais drew me for Christmas, a print of two cowboy boots that Mollie sent in her last letter, a poem called “Instructions On Not Giving Up” that Tara wrote and decorated and gave to me when I was at a low point last summer, my Papa’s dream catcher that gets a special place in every room I live in, a photo of myself and Gianna dancing at Coachella 2018, a polaroid of Tanner and I taken in 2002, a hand painted card from Nielsan, a photo with Sophia from the time she came all the way from San Diego to London to visit me, a Christmas card from Nielsan’s mom, Ann-Margreth, that made me cry because I was in the U.K. during the holidays and she reminded me that “I am not alone,” photos with my new friends and coworkers, Luc and Gwynnie, from the company Christmas party, a poem from the Brick Lane Bookshop ‘Poet For Hire’ who wrote about the girls I became friends with when I went to a concert alone, a photo strip from a NYC trip in 2021, where five of us attempted to squeeze into the tiny booth — love is everywhere, and oftentimes, you don’t have to look too hard to find it. Speaking of, Mollie just texted me a photo of a rack of zines in a Nashville bookshop saying, “was in a little shop here in nash and found this rack of zines! reminded me of youuuu. i could see yours fitting in here :).” It’s the little things that mean the most.

Growing up, I thought love was what I found through the books I read and the videos I consumed and the celebrities I admired. It was the couples on Tumblr and the vlogs on YouTube and the fictional narratives and fantasies I’d replay in my head until I fell asleep. Now, as a “grown up” (or, rather, a tax-paying girl who cherishes a good night’s sleep and gets excited when her Club Card saves .50 on groceries), I truly feel how lucky I was — and am — to have grown up with a loving relationship with my parents, who also have a loving relationship with each other. It would feel wrong to write a about the love in my life without mentioning my parents.

My mom is named Prue, short for Prudence, and my dad is named Ot, short for Othmar, but he also goes by Steve. We can get into that another time, but all you need to know is that he is Dutch, he is funny, and he is the reason I can’t talk without smiling. My mom is Filipino, extremely fashion forward, and she is the reason I always surprise my loved ones with sweet treats, and probably the reason I love clothes so much. The way my parents met is somewhat of a fairytale story (which I wrote about in one of my zines and will paste below if you’re interested) and growing up in the presence of their love for each other has been integral to my comprehension of a healthy, happy, and secure relationship. Every day, without fail, my dad says something that makes my mom laugh. “He’s so funny,” she’ll say, wiping tears. I told myself I would never settle until I met someone who makes my mom laugh the way my dad does. Every morning, at 7AM, my mom makes the two of them a fresh cup of coffee, because she knows it’s my dad’s favorite part of the day, and they sit in bed with Achilles. I could go on with anecdotes and examples, but I’d like to let some of their habits stay sacred. They are always admiring each other and showing each other affection in the ways they know how. Whether they’d like to admit to it or not, they both look young, and honestly, I think it’s the love that keeps them that way.

I spent the last 10 years looking for love, and I can wholeheartedly say I have found it. It wasn’t in the depths of the internet, or in the books lining 15-year-old-me’s shelves, or in the boy from high school that bread crumbed me with attention for a month and a half. It is — and has always been — within myself and the people I choose to surround myself with. It is in the WordArt journals little me made, and the notes from my friends, and the flowers on my desk. In Daria’s Chai updates to the group chat and Maddie’s selfie of her crying while reading the first draft of this article. In the pottery date Nielsan arranged last Sunday because he knows I am too intimidated to go to a class alone. In the way my mom still hasn’t erased the mirror note I wrote her in 2022 and in the birthday gifts and cards Gianna and Paisley sent from overseas. In the letters from my Great Grandma and the mail Nielsan just placed on my desk two seconds ago — a birthday card from Alix — decorated in Valentine’s day-themed Snoopy stickers. In my decision to write about the lovely people in my life, and their decision to take the time out of their day to read a post this long. In me and in you.

I’m telling you - love is everywhere.

<3