Member-only story
I Keep Falling in Love With Strangers on the Subway
It’s easier to risk getting burned when you know they’ll leave from the start
I have a habit no one knows about (except, of course, the people who are now reading about it on the world wide web). I have a tendency to fall in love with strangers on buses, trains, and trolleys. Sometimes it happens at the station when I’m waiting for the next train to pull up. Other times, it happens during my commute. On other days, it happens as I brush past a passenger who’s boarding a train as I exit. For a brief moment, our eyes will connect, and sometimes our souls, and I imagine a lifetime together. This dream of what could be disintegrates as soon as one or both of us arrives at our stop. But for that one single moment, I feel less lonely, more hopeful, and safe in the knowledge that it never really could be.
I spent my teenage and early adult years as a magnet for trouble. I met my first boyfriend in a psychiatric hospital as a teenager. I tried to act like it was a normal, healthy place to meet a normal, healthy person, but the rocky relationship did a poor job of backing that up. I met my second boyfriend at church. After a week, he decided that if I wouldn’t commit to marrying him right then, he needed to explicitly threaten to abuse me. I filed a PFA (Protection From Abuse order), and I…
