L.A. Affairs: He treated me how I wished I could treat myself
I met Justin under dinosaur bones.
I’d been hearing about him for weeks. He was spending the summer with my best friend, Conor, while interning at the American Civil Liberties Union. They had grown up in Florida together playing Frisbee on golf courses at sunset.
The three of us decided to meet at L.A.’s Natural History Museum for a First Fridays event. Upon arriving I ordered a gin and tonic to soothe my perpetually-on-fire nervous system. I had cancer as a teenager, and 11 years after remission, my body had finally begun to process the trauma. Drinking helped even things out.
I hadn’t dated anyone in years until I met a handsome man at a brewery in the Valley. It felt wonderful to be adored, wanted and wooed again.
Justin was so handsome; broad, tall and gray-blue eyes like San Francisco fog. He really looked at you when you spoke. So many people in L.A. don’t actually participate in the give-and-take of conversation. They wait for their turn to share their stuff in the air pockets of you talking. Justin’s attention on me was almost startling.
I had sworn off relationships after breaking up with a boyfriend six months before. My anxiety was so bad. Almost daily, I convinced myself I was dying. I was hardly eating, barely sleeping, and socializing felt like running a marathon. My focus needed to be on my mental health. Plans for the summer included Griffith Park hikes in solitude, going to therapy like it was a college course my career depended on and soaking in tepid baths.
As we weaved through gleaming stones in the Gem and Mineral Hall, I learned Justin had an identical twin brother, that he’s friends with his parents and that he felt called to help people.
In the Age of Mammals exhibit, multicolored lights moved in rhythm to a DJ mixing hip-hop and dance music. My spine softly vibrated each time Justin bent down to say something in my ear over the music. Something about the way the taxidermist positioned the tiger or the haunting lifelessness of its eyes. By this point, Conor had wandered off ahead us. I later learned he had told Justin before he arrived in L.A. that he was bound to fall in love with me.
I first saw him and his fraternity brothers at a nightclub in West Hollywood. I wanted him so badly. But I also wanted to be him.
As we meandered outside the museum, the reinvigorating night air whispering to me that Justin and I were alive at the same time — on the same planet that dinosaurs and woolly mammoths once roamed — I experienced an enchanting rush I’d never felt before. I knew we would know each other forever.
Justin and I were entangled, and in a million different lifetimes, it was always going to happen like this. It was during our spirited debate of who would win in a fight to the death — a Komodo dragon or a hippopotamus — that I knew this.
I realized something else that night. I could have fun, flirt and dance in front of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton to “Nice for What” all while anxious. Dealing with trauma can feel all-encompassing, but life keeps happening — even when your hand shakes as you squeeze the lime into your gin and tonic.
The next several weeks were filled with lots of what I’m sure looked like small moments from the outside but felt like cartoon symphonies on the inside — prolonged eye contact at a speakeasy downtown, touching hands at an improv show at Second City, dancing and kissing until 2 a.m. at the Surly Goat and then falling asleep instantly on an air mattress in Conor’s kitchen. I felt anxiety coursing through my body like an electric current during all of these romantic snapshots. But looking back, none of that is what I remember the clearest.
Justin was so sweet to me all summer. I told him about having cancer as a teenager and how I woke up one morning in my late 20s fearful of my own body and how the trauma was manifesting in myriad strange ways that I didn’t understand. He was patient, supportive and nonjudgmental. He treated me how I wished I could treat myself. Justin liked me just as I was.
I pointed to the empty chair across from me. ‘Would you like to share a table?’ That simple question would be the start of a new relationship.
A lot of people will tell you that you need to work on yourself before seeking out a relationship. That you need to be whole. But no one is ever fully, really whole. We still deserve good things even when we’re hollow.
When fall came, it was time for Justin to go back to law school. We were in love, not knowing if our feelings would fade along with the summer — or if we were building something with meat on its bones.
The feelings did not fade. We texted each other throughout the day and talked on the phone at night. He’d send me podcast episodes on politics, and I’d send him poems to continue the process of learning about each other. We really enjoyed hearing how the other person thought about things and discovering the lens through which they viewed the world.
The first time I visited him in Boston, we held hands around the Harvard campus, picnicked at Boston Common and carried on our habit of making out in bars. I met his twin brother and his friends who, unsurprisingly, thought the world of him. And I fell deeper in love. By the end of the trip, we made things official.
Watching ‘The Bear’ brought up memories of my own tattooed chef. Our relationship was doomed from the start.
We did long distance for two years and then moved in together in L.A. at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our home felt safe and happy amid a terrifying backdrop. Between my panic attacks, we would make tea and hold each other as the water boiled, only letting go when the baby-blue kettle let out the scream that was trapped inside all of us at that time. We played board games, cackled at old movies and talked. We did a lot of talking. I can talk with Justin like I can’t talk with anyone else.
Today we live together in the Bay Area with a funny little cat named Lady. I still struggle with anxiety but I’m also in a tender, strong relationship — so strong I bet it could withstand a meteor.
The author is a writer and poet based in the Bay Area. She’s on Instagram: @kelseytakes
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $300 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
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