Lonely and bored, bored and lonely– the ongoing theme of quarantine. Even if you have a thousand tasks to complete and a house full of family, the feeling still persists. Well, maybe not for everyone, but arguably many. Prior to quarantine, I was content with my daily positive social interactions from classmates, professors, and friends. None were drawn out or particularly close-knit situations, but it was these small doses of connection that kept me motivated and grounded. I took pleasure in exploring the city alone and sharing my discoveries with a classmate over a quick cup of tea before a shared class, or talking about something I read with an engaging professor during office hours. Now, alone more than ever, I know that “introvert” is not synonymous with “recluse.” With so much time and too many alone thoughts, I asked myself, what is love (baby don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me, no moreeeee!)? I could not answer this. So, why not figure out what the opposite of love is and work from there? Some say hate. But no, that is the absence of love. A hole. An emptiness. Even the most active of hatreds caves, and if it is fiery then it is not exclusively hate. Instead, it is grief, it is longing. It is full of strong emotion that rivals that of love; it is the love for which is craved. The love one can’t have, either from the start or to the finish. It is the yearning as your touch your lips, their face in your mind’s eye. The shaky breath when a path is a dead end.

So, love must be the reverse. It is the fulfillment, the overflow. It has the same flames of grief, but with joy instead of pain. It is the feeling of wanting and being equally wanted in return. The excitement of many possible paths. Opportunities. The world coming into focus as they hold you on a rough night. The happiness that a warm, rainy day brings as the greens become just a little bit greener.

It brings me intense, well, grief, to say that I’m not sure if I have ever felt love like that before, or at least one that wasn’t fleeting. As I spent countless quarantined nights alone with those thoughts in the back of my mind, figuring out what exactly it is and isn’t, I realized that the newfound loneliness drove me to seek that definition. Rather than being content with the interaction I had before, I now wanted more to make up for it. My music choices shifted to things that made me feel any emotion I could get. My reading preferences shifted to romance and romance-esque genres. If I could live vicariously through a character or melody, I was going to. I even tried to seriously date for the first time in my life, only for that to end after a hefty dose of self-realization. Before the rose-coloured glasses shattered, I had a few moments of romance. They were as ephemeral as the shooting stars we watched after a day of exploration, music playing, huddled up on the roof of their car. As brief as the autumn rain shower we sat in, listening to the sound of each other’s breaths through the pitter patters of the drops hitting the gravel below. Falling asleep on their shoulder because I still wanted to visit them after a long day. It’s easy to think about those moments and ask why I ended things when I did, but the feeling of their warm tears hitting my skin because they wanted more than I could give says it all.

I’m in a place where my romantic and sexual preferences don’t exactly align, or well, I don’t think they do. It’s a recent development, and coming to terms with that hasn’t been easy. I’m not ready to talk about that, though. But having been teased with such moments before and cursed with the self-reflection I sought out, I want to feel loved and to reciprocate without fear of crashing. I’ll admit, it’s driving me a little bit loopy; I have to keep asking myself if what I feel is friendship or something more. What really separates a friend’s love and a romantic love? Professor Google likes to tie in sexual attraction with it, but clearly such preferences can be held separate. Some sites ask if you’d be jealous if that person was in a relationship with someone else, but I don’t really find my feathers ruffled if another person finds their happiness without me in it. I guess the hope is that whoever “my person” is supposed to be would have no doubts about it being me and vise versa. Maybe that’s too romantic of a way to look at it, but I’d want them to like my eccentricities and worries as much as they do my geeky rambles and wild hair. I can also see partnership as a practical option, but it does bring me an ounce of dejection at the thought of a romance-less relationship. Sometimes I wonder if my romantic preferences are not what I believe them to be for that exact reason, but I have yet to find out.

In the loneliness and boredom of quarantine, I find myself reading into every interaction far more than I should, and I’m stuck replaying life like the infamous hand touch in Pride and Prejudice. What does it mean if friends sit close together on a couch? If friends share music, romantic songs have to come up now and then and it doesn’t mean anything, right? They recommend I read a book, and next thing you know I have it in hand, ignoring my work to read it and see if it gives me any clues to what the situation is between us (Love in the Time of Cholera, hence the title of this post). I can’t tell if some friendships make me lonelier now that they consist mostly of digital presences. I didn’t realize how much I want to hold and be held, although it may be nothing more than a case of the grass being greener on the other side. An interesting research position or teaching job in an new place would probably give me purpose. Maybe the takeaway of this is to just not take 22 credit hours, work three to fours days a week, have a capstone thesis to develop, babysit, have future plans massively changed due to COVID, and still expect to have a positive outlook on life. Well, I’ll get through this, as will we all. I guess the shared circumstance is what is holding us together now, no? Until next time.

Happy reading,
-Beppa