Before You
My name is Elina. I’m thirty-six years old, five-foot-four—or 1.63 meters, if we’re being precise—with long blonde curls that have never learned how to behave, blue eyes, and a body I’ve worked hard to feel comfortable in again.
But those are only the things you would notice if you saw me walking down the street. They wouldn’t tell you anything important about me.
They wouldn’t tell you how many times I’ve had to put myself back together.
They wouldn’t tell you that I learned how to smile while my entire life was changing beneath my feet. Or that sometimes the strongest version of a woman isn’t the one who conquers the world.
Sometimes she’s simply the one who gets out of bed in the morning, makes breakfast for her child, goes to work, pays the bills, answers emails, remembers the groceries, reads the bedtime story—and somehow finds enough strength to do it all again tomorrow.
I became that woman at thirty-two. That was the year I got divorced.
I wish I could tell you there was one dramatic moment when everything ended. A slammed door. A suitcase thrown into the trunk of a car. A final sentence so devastating that the credits could have rolled immediately afterward.
There wasn’t.
Real endings are rarely that considerate.
Mine came through hundreds of smaller moments. Conversations that went nowhere. Silences that lasted too long. Disappointments I learned to swallow. The gradual realization that the person sleeping beside me had become someone I no longer knew—or perhaps someone I had finally begun to see clearly.
And then one day, the word married stopped describing me.
I was thirty-two years old.
Divorced.
And the mother of a five-year-old boy who needed his world to remain safe even though mine had just fallen apart.
That changed everything.
There was no luxury of collapsing completely. No disappearing for six months to find myself somewhere in Bali. No dramatic reinvention involving cutting off all my hair and drinking wine at noon.
There were kindergarten mornings.
There were tiny shoes to find when we were already late. There were bills.
There were meetings.
There were bedtime stories.
There was a little boy looking at me with absolute trust, believing his mother knew exactly what she was doing.
I didn’t.
But I became very good at pretending I did.
And eventually, somewhere between pretending and surviving, I actually learned.
I built routines. I became more ambitious at work. I pushed myself harder than I ever had before. I was working for a multinational company, building a career while simultaneously building a home where my son could grow up without feeling that something essential had been taken away from him.
I wanted him to have stability.
Security.
Opportunities.
Most of all, I wanted the choices I made after my divorce to be choices I would never have to apologize to him for.
So I became careful.
Perhaps too careful.
Especially with men.
At first, people told me I should start dating again.
“You’re still young, Elina.”
“You can’t stay alone forever.”
“There are good men out there.”
I hated that last one.
Not because I didn’t believe it.
Because everyone said it as though finding one was simply a matter of walking outside and checking behind the nearest tree.
Still, eventually I tried.
I downloaded the apps.
Then deleted them.
Then downloaded them again.
I swiped through photographs of men standing beside expensive cars, men holding enormous fish for reasons I still don’t understand, men posing shirtless in bathroom mirrors, men whose biographies consisted entirely of gym routines and inspirational quotes.
And occasionally, there was someone interesting enough for coffee.
So I went.
I sat across from strangers and listened to stories about careers, divorces, investments, ex-girlfriends, children, ambitions and disappointments.
Some were handsome.
Some were intelligent.
Some were genuinely kind.
A few made me laugh.
None made me want a second date.
There was always something missing.
That invisible pull.
That moment when someone looks at you and suddenly you’re intensely aware that you’re a woman sitting across from a man.
I wanted that.
God, I wanted it.
Not desperately.
But deeply.
I wanted conversation that made me forget to look at my phone. I wanted laughter that came easily. I wanted to feel someone’s eyes remain on me half a second longer than politeness required.
I wanted anticipation.
Chemistry.
Desire.
I wanted to be touched someday and know that the man touching me understood the difference between possessing a woman’s body and being invited into her world.
But date after date left me feeling strangely empty.
Eventually, I stopped trying.
One month became six.
Six months became a year.
Then another.
And another.
My life filled the spaces romance had once occupied.
My son grew older.
My career grew bigger.
I grew stronger.
I learned to travel without needing someone beside me. I learned to order dinner for one without feeling watched. I learned that an empty side of the bed could mean loneliness—but it could also mean freedom.
And somewhere along the way, I stopped waiting.
At thirty-six, I had constructed a life that worked.
Maybe it wasn’t the life I had imagined when I was twenty.
But it was mine.
My mornings were chaotic. My calendar was ridiculous. My son occupied the largest part of my heart, and my career consumed more hours than I would ever admit aloud.
Romance had become something belonging to another version of me.
Sex belonged mostly to memory.
Love belonged to books.
And I had made peace with that.
Or at least, I thought I had.
That’s the strange thing about the moments that change your life.
They rarely announce themselves.
There is no music playing in the background.
No warning.
No mysterious voice whispering, Pay attention, Elina. Everything after this will be different.
Sometimes it’s simply another ordinary day.
You wake up.
You get dressed.
You kiss your child goodbye.
You go to work.
You answer messages.
You drink coffee that’s already gone cold.
And somewhere in the middle of a life you believe you’ve finally figured out, you meet someone.
Someone you weren’t searching for. Someone you absolutely did not need.
Someone who looks into your eyes and awakens a part of you that you had carefully taught yourself to live without.
I didn’t know it yet, but my carefully controlled life was about to become anything but controlled.
Because I was about to meet him. And for the first time in four years, there would be a second date.
