Yearning in the Age of Pandemic

This was written on the seventh of April 2020.

Two weeks ago I was scrolling through Tinder questioning what I was doing there again, while also realizing that in the face of a global pandemic there were worse activities I could be engaging in. I scrolled and scrolled and scrolled and just as I was about to close the app I saw what looked like a familiar face. I was certain we had matched before and I was unsure why we had once again came across each other and matched. He had red hair which is nearly impossible to rock, but somehow on him it looked normal. His eyes looked kind, but also like they had seen their fair share in this life. At the age of 25, those types of things become attractive. You want to surround yourself with people who have been able to put themselves back together again. I sent a message and hoped for a reply. I had a good feeling about him which felt rare because there’s only so much you can gage about someone from an online profile. Still, I felt it was important that I followed my gut. We went back and forth sharing tidbits of our interests and details of the day. I quickly learned that this was someone who wasn’t scared to share who he was, and I greatly admired that. It was only a couple days before we facetimed and, in simple yet definitive ways, expressed our attraction toward each other. One of us reached out to the other almost every day and suddenly it felt like we had jumped into some sort of relationship. It was not anything concrete or defined, but something that we understood to hold some kind of worth. Something inside me said to slow things down, but I was already mentally tied to the idea of this guy. Don’t interpret this wrong, I did not expect an irl relationship with this guy, but I enjoyed the way we connected, and I knew I wanted it to continue. After two weeks he failed to call three nights in a row after promising he would. Once again, my intuition kicked it just like it had in the beginning. However, this time it told me that things were likely to slow down. We would stop reaching out, and just like that we would go back to our respective lives without taking the time to express interest in each others days. The laughter subsided and so did the idea of friendship. I struggled with this realization, and I was frustrated that I struggled. It seemed silly to wake up in the morning slightly depressed and frustrated that things wouldn’t work out. Maybe it was because it confirmed my doubts that something special would come my way. It had been a very long time since I had felt genuinely excited about someone. I explored my mind for reasons. Maybe I grew attached because the last relationship I was in was abusive. Maybe I was just lonely because of the mandatory isolation in place. Or maybe it was because there was real potential. Maybe there is potential. Maybe he would call and things would return to the trajectory in which they had been moving in. But in this moment, I am questioning if I would allow that, if that would be the best thing for me. I don’t want to put my time into someone, and as a result, ignore the work that I know still needs to be done within myself. For now, I will keep on enjoying the moments while proceeding with caution. Maybe in a few months my eyes will look upon his and we will figure it out together. Maybe the image of his eyes will flash through my mind a few months later only as a fleeting memory. Maybe this is yet another lesson. In either case, we continue to endure, to hope, and ultimately find out a little more about ourselves from each other, in times of both global distress and innocent bliss.