Nobody said it'd be easy.

I was freshly 18 when he and I met at a party in a new friend's basement. You know, one of those places with the low-slung ceilings, mismatched furniture and a keg on ice. I had plans to move to the dorms that week and join the college scene as a smart-but-social co-ed. I didn't want a boyfriend. But he was tall and skinny and had shaggy brown hair. With those three characteristics, he met all of my teenage girl criteria. And so, he was mine before he knew he was mine.

I can map the trajectory of our relationship according to the evolution of his haircut. At first it was long, far past his ears, unkempt and chill. So was our relationship. It was fun and carefree. We partied, crashed on friends' floors and made beer-fueled memories we couldn't remember the next morning. Then he cut it. It was still long, but it was above the ears. It was still cool but more serious, more suitable for a degree-seeking 20-something. Our fun fling took a similar twist toward serious. We began saying "I love you" at the end of every call and increasingly chose Netflix and frozen pizza over drunk non-memories. With every inch he cut off, we inched closer to middle-class suburbia and joint tax filings.

Five years in, I moved to Spain to work for what was supposed to be a one-year deal. As part of that, I was traveling, teaching, making new friends and drinking wine and coffee. (Both were drinks I'd always adamantly despised before. They stain your teeth. They taste like shit.) And so, ours was a slow, undetectable decay, like a tumor that goes unnoticed until you're saying your last goodbye. I found myself embracing everything around me in Europe and embracing a life without him. I call B.S. on the "absence makes the heart grow fonder" line. With every Skype call missed, we grew further apart. While I was gone, he became a career man, a slacks-and-button-up man with his own health insurance and 401k. Meanwhile, I became even more of a lost soul. I was overqualified to be unemployed post-Spain but too clueless to know what I wanted to do. 

I can't pinpoint when exactly I questioned going back to Nebraska to settle down, but it seems I came to a fork in the road. One path was full of curves, bends I couldn't see past and neon warning signs. It promised to be exciting but full of risk and uncertainty. The other path was straight and narrow, lauded for its smooth surface and suitability for cruise control. It was The Path by any rational standards. It was safe and comfortable, The Sure Thing that everyone searches for. I spent days, nights, mornings, evenings and middle-of-the-nights telling myself The Path was the right path for me. 

When I finally chose The Wrong Path, I cried. He cried. We cried, but rarely at the same time. It always seemed like he was grieving when I wasn't, or vice versa. I grieved in private, at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., 4 a.m., as the unrelenting cadence of motorbikes outside my barely-there street-side window kept me awake.

I could've had it all - a nice house, a stable career, a handsome, loving husband who would kiss me before leaving for work in his new sedan. Instead, I moved back to Spain, where I rent a bedroom in a furnished apartment and earn a pittance at my part-time teaching job. Here I'm seeing the world, gaining Spanish fluency more each day and challenging myself to build a life as a young woman who doesn't identify as the future Mrs. Anybody. 

It has not been easy, but in life we're liable for the decisions we make and the hearts we break. I broke my heart and his heart and our families' hearts, and that weighs on me every day. I struggle with my decision, and having faith that I made the right one is a daily challenge. Months after calling off our wedding, moving on remains an ongoing pursuit. We've relapsed too many times to count, done the familiar dance of exes caught somewhere between committed and not.

There are days when the allure of The American Dream eats at me like a parasite I can't shake. We tend to measure life by a quantifiable system of metrics, and accordingly, I'm failing. We assess success by hours worked, children raised, money earned and cars owned. The intangible victories - challenges overcome or fears conquered, for example - don't count for as much. I recognize that. I don't expect everyone to understand my choice, to legitimize my lifestyle or to encourage my wanderlust. But I do hope that they respect my decision and the guts it took to make it. Maybe he and I will be Us again someday. Neither of us can say for sure. I still love him, but for now, I've chosen to live instead of to love - to live out my dreams, to not let them be dreams at all, really. So here's to having the courage to follow my instincts and the confidence that I've pursued happiness, even if in the end, I could've found it right in front of me.