Love in the Time of Corona

“It was the year they fell into devastating love. Neither one could do anything except think about the other, dream about the other, and wait for letters with the same impatience they felt when they answered them.”

- Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

I have grown unreservedly weary of the notion that if it’s too good to be true it probably is. Have we become so jaded that we no longer believe that we are entitled to pleasure? I, for one, reject that premise entirely. If we can grasp even the slightest moment of contentment in this absurd and irrational realm with every damn nigh apocalyptic occurrence currently transpiring ad nauseum why fucking shouldn’t we? I am confidently apathetic as to whether or not it fits others’ anticipations of how happiness should appear and am unaffectedly indifferent apropos of the antiquated conventions it is expected to meet. To finally be truly gratified, fulfilled and secure amidst the dumpster fire burning furiously around us? I will undoubtedly sink my teeth into that shit and not a fuck am I relinquishing my grip. 

It is, to some extent, bewildering that all it can take is a singular, profoundly incredible human being to illustrate that you have exhausted 32 years of your existence utterly delusional vis-à-vis the conventions of romantic love. All of the calamity, the waterworks, self-loathing, cross-examination, torment, self-harm and substance abuse. The ostensible ardent melancholy; the aspirant, unambitious originators with their deep-rooted misery and unrelenting malaise. That cloying fairy-tale can remain buried within the pages of angsty dark romance novels where the tired trope of the tortured artist belongs.

Those who persistently weighed you down, made you feel less-than, imbibed your verve and joie de vivre with the ferocity of a ravenous succubus. Those that made you feel insignificant so that they might feel extraordinary, superior. Unswervingly placing you on trial and condemning you for their own inadequacies and failures and disenchantments. Those whose voices were deafening all the while refusing to hear. Those who floundered in their darkness and expected you to do the same, simultaneously dragging you into their very own personal circle of hell. Those who held you responsible for their misfires, incompetence and undoubtedly their own repentances, negating any accountability for the circumstances of their own creation. 

No. 

That is not love. 

Love, as I have recently come to comprehend and conceivably clandestinely yearned for, can best be described as the quintessence of euphoria. Love, to quote Kundera, “causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights,” filled with unadulterated elation and pure nirvana. Love is veneration, growing together, motivating each other, albeit through the trivial and inconsequential absurdities of everyday life. A love that is rooted in conviction and fortified by a sense of humour. Rather than wallowing in pain and disappointments, love should be supporting one another, having each other’s backs. Making that person, your person, feel remarkable, adored, and validated every goddamn day. To wake up exultant and at ease, to truly not let anything or anyone have the power to bring you down. 

That, my friends, is what fucking love should be all about.

M xx