the love of my life (until next week)

a case for letting yourself fall

Thank you to Hinge for sponsoring this newsletter so I can continue to find words for the only state I’m yet to accurately describe: romance. #HingePartner

The No Ordinary Love anthology by Hinge beautifully explores unconventional love in all its complex forms, pulling us in with its magical relatability. The beauty of these real-life stories like Tony and Sam’s or Tyla and Jerome’s is that none of the couples are trying to be something they aren’t: things get rocky, complicated, confusing, aligning in a kaleidoscope of experiences colored in every shade of realism. The delicious waiting and pining depicted in Tony and Sam’s story told by William Rayfet Hunter is particularly fascinating: two hopeful souls, one big bustling city, and a hope for something true. “Stop looking at him. But how can I turn away?” Sam ponders, wanting to be seen. It’s a crush, and it’s collateral. Which one of us hasn’t been there, soaking up a feeling as it oozes miracles from all sides? Which one of us hasn’t lost sleep over a sheer whisper of a promise? A crush is a liminal space where nothing’s guaranteed but anything is possible. I myself have been there more times than is appropriate to admit.

There’s a particular kind of dreamer to whom a crush is a religion, a raison d'être. The meaning found in places where all else has been lost. Allow me to come out as one: when I like someone, I let the crush consume my mind. It’s not so much a deliberate choice, really, rather a disposition, one I could possibly withstand or take a placebo pill for if I got too ashamed. But when I’m this childlike, wide-eyed, weak in the knees and stomach-knotted, that’s when I’m at my best, so why would I? And how bored would I be with my dwindling attention span, collapsing under shortcuts and begging for love at the altar of nihilistic convenience and loneliness-sponsored e-commerce, if I didn’t have my crushes? Liking somebody and letting it consume you head to toe is the most alive you’ll feel. You’d have to pry this feeling out of my hands.

The inconvenience of it all is part of the deal. There is the losing sleep aspect, poor appetite, and crossing the ordinary routes off of the longing map. If you’ve got responsibilities to attend to and bills to pay, prepare for it all to go out the window together with your rigidity. For better or for worse? In any case, forgivable: a solid sleep schedule attending to circadian rhythms and an A+ fitness game are conceptually great, but the butterflies aren’t quite the same. The double –no, quadruple– texting, embarrassment followed by wanting more, the should’ve waited a few minutes before responding, none of it matters, really. You want the velvet name of your current lover-to-be lighting up your screen just one more time before your restless head hits the pillow. Plus, sleep is not such a priority when you suddenly see the world in multicolor.

Time warps, bends, and ceases to exist if I’m enamored enough – in fact, I often forget there are any social rules in place at all. What’s all the waiting game for when the rush takes over? There was a time now, I remember, I said the big three words way too soon, a few days into a relationship. I know. I was twenty and naive, convinced her and I were heading to a great forever. On another occasion, I made a birthday cake for a guy I’d known for merely a week. I was twenty six and much wiser. You can giggle, but you can’t judge – because you’ve been there, too. Not impressed by the concept of having a ‘roster’ or getting entangled in a talking stage that drags out for months, I go hard or go home: in fact, I’ve been planning our corny photobooth pictures, the 4th of July with your family, the baby shower, since the moment I saw you. And when it’s been two weeks and I’ve spent exactly 75% of my time teetering between your couch and your duvet, absorbed in your greatness, and my friends think I've gone missing, I have nothing to say in my defense. I want to be coated in your brilliance, try on everything you are and everything you pretend not to be, to look at you with my honey-soaked eyes as you relay the story of our first encounter with pride and exaggeration. How the dialogue flows between us like in a movie, how the nights blend into days and get acquainted past the sunrise, how it all just makes sense between you and I. Try to trace the feeling back to when I was somebody with a functioning brain. It’s not working. And I don’t mind.

I had a phase once after one too many disappointments: a strict embargo was proclaimed on liking people. Metaphorically, literally, and figuratively. To tell yourself that from now on, you’re going to be cold and ruthless and like! people! less! is a punishment for anyone above average on the romantic scale, let alone a lost cause like myself. I was going to become so cool, so avoidant, devoted to never getting hurt again. Committed to it and lasted for about seven lifeless, dreadful days – then back to making a playlist titled after the boy I met in the elevator. Some neural pathways just cannot fire backwards. Who are we to tell them what to do?

Perhaps you want me to say that it’s a temporary state, that I’m embarrassed by the enormity of my desire, just how unfitting and disproportional it almost always feels to a situation. Is a new exciting Hinge match or meeting someone at a bar such a big deal? It shouldn’t be. But what is there to lose exactly in a world where skepticism and cold detachment reign? Dignity? A steel shield against rejection? I’m not convinced. There’s this rhetoric in modern dating that we all come into it with a hidden agenda, chasing money, status, convenience, or comfort. Most of us, quite frankly, are just chasing butterflies. I’d be a fool not to preserve my earnest, candid wanting – one that cuts through the noise of isolation and self-importance. Sure, it’s too pure, nauseatingly naive and lacking strategy, but that’s the true, unfiltered beauty of it all I wouldn’t trade for any armor. When you really like somebody, the taker in you turns into a giver. We were meant to give.

So when a friend of mine candidly admits she likes a guy a little too much, a little too soon, I tell her that this is the safest place to go all in and double down on the crushing. Maybe the second safest after her therapist’s waiting room. My stance on this is loud and controversial: life is hard and strict enough as is to deprive yourself of tenors where you should be allowed a little free fall as a treat. When was the last time you stayed up all night talking to somebody shiny and new? Or the last time you let your heart bleed out on the pavement no matter the consequences? There’s this one tiny little life we’re lucky to drive to the fullest, no speeding tickets, to split both the mystique and the waiting, something so inexplicable and indulging. You didn’t hear it from me, but if it’s beautiful and potentially hurts, it certainly is worth a shot.

Perhaps my favorite part of just how strongly I’m able to devote myself is the short-term memory loss the unexpected brings. Romanticization is an undying skill, maybe even an innate talent, well-sharpened against disappointment. It helps us bounce back from heartbreak of any magnitude without losing any of the novelty or hope for things. Of course you’ll get worn out by the inevitable separation, rejection, some loss here and there. Didn’t you read the fine print? That’s always guaranteed, and nobody is absolved, even the toughest and the most avoidant. But the more you let yourself be enamored with the promise of tomorrow, the faster you forget the yesterdays that didn’t work. Desire is brutal and often rogue, but have we really lived if we’ve never cried over a date gone wrong or overinvesting into something fleeting? Potential is an infinite resource and not to be exhausted by trial and error. After all, no love is ordinary, no crush is futile, and life with a little bit of blind hope and devotion is just what the doctor ordered on a hot, humid summer day.