By Emily Coleman

I was taking the train from Bristol to Cheltenham when a lyric from a song playing in my ear caught my attention: true romantics sleep alone. 

It seemed like a paradox masked as poetry. How can true romantics sleep alone? Surely, they could never be alone? 

I have a habit of thinking deeply, rolling my mind back like a video of memories. I attribute this to my enormous capacity to love – to love the one individual I hope to be with for the rest of my life. While this has always served that particular individual very well, it has left me in situations where this capacity to love feels like a hole in which my energy is disappearing. 

Moments I remember include watching someone I liked display their liking for someone else in a club through clumsy courtship. They include watching them hold someone else’s hand and smile. But there are also the instances when I remember the first time someone called me gorgeous, or the time when I was kissed in the rain, or the first time someone told me that they loved me. You certainly need the lows to appreciate the highs. I know that now. 

What I’m trying to say, in many tangled thoughts and words, is that I consider myself a true romantic. My capacity to love someone in this manner is not the only reason why I characterise myself in this way; it is also my fear of being alone. 

I suppose we all have this fear because loneliness is, after all, cruel and quiet. Those who know me would be quick to say that I’m not alone, and it’s true. I have the person I’ve always wanted by my side, although it took a few years and the respective living out of our different choices. 

But there’s another lyric that sticks in my mind: and girl what grows up, must come down. 

Truth is, I’ve found love at a young age. I’m only twenty-two. On the cusp of my career, I am moving out, beginning that cliched next chapter. There are bright things ahead for both my partner and me. But you don’t have to read every novel, watch every film, or listen to every song to know life will throw a plot twist in your relationship’s direction. As you grow up, some things inevitably can fall apart. 

These plot twists don’t have to be the end. I would rather grow up with someone and learn how to face the changing tide together and have years to look back on together. Part of my true romantic quality is that I want to look back proudly at the happiness I had with someone rather than at what I did 9–5, Monday to Friday. It’s true that I am a hard worker and have achievements to be proud of, but to me personally they mean nothing if I don’t have anyone to share them with. To have someone to vent to about office dilemmas, to look out on stage during graduation, to read what I write for my magazine work. 

I’ve always wanted someone to come back to. Whether that quality leaves me in love from twenty-two until gone-past eighty or sleeping alone, I know I would have given all I have. Because worse than the fear of being alone is the fear of never being loved. I can say that I know that now, too, and no longer fear the latter. 

Those who care about me tell me not to compromise on my career or future or lose out on opportunities for someone when that relationship has no magical paper attached to authorise its permanence. These are true things; I shouldn’t compromise on my future or my career. There are many couples around me who have come to a crossroads and taken different directions. 

But what I want my future to be, and I realise it more and more, is to be someone, not something. I’m always going to work hard, earn the best job I can, and write whatever I think or feel no matter where I am. If anything, I believe it’s my capacity to love which makes me opportunistic: I’m prepared to explore new things, places, opportunities that come alongside being with the person who is deserving of the flexibility my feelings provide.

I’ll never leave myself out in the storm for someone. I’ll know if this person is deserving of things I have to do to keep our relationship steady against the course of time and the waves of our unpredictable twenties, which are gathering height. 

I think I’ll know when to take a different direction if needed. But for now, as I embrace the true romantic in me who lay awkwardly dormant for much of my life, I already know which directions I’m taking. 

True romantics may sleep alone, but I would rather sleep alone knowing I chose love. I’m going to enjoy the time I have with my partner, letting them know where I stand whenever that inevitable plot twist comes our way. I’ll be taking that train back to Bristol soon.