Love in the time of coronavirus
I’m sure at this point, you’re all tired of hearing about the coronavirus (COVID-19). I know I am. But my boyfriend said something interesting the other day: “Can you imagine that a few years from now, we’ll look back and say, ‘wow, our relationship really flourished and bloomed during coronavirus.’”
“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.”
The last week has been hectic, and I haven’t accomplished a lot of writing. Writing, in some way, is its own kind of sickness, I suppose. Below is a piece of writing from my book, Probably Nothing.
I’m happiest
In that space between awake and dreaming, when I can close my eyes and imagine he’s thinking about me and wishing for me, it’s a space where he’s the closest thing to me, and I know I said I was happiest when I’m writing, but I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive.
This writing is a fever dream, it’s sickness and disease, and I haven’t been able to recover since I was six years old.
This is going to kill me eventually, I can feel myself falling apart. It’s not pretty, writing is supposed to be beautiful, but it’s my skin staining and itching and burning, it’s falling off the bone. Don’t look away now, don’t fucking look away, and I think I understand why artists die young. We’re killing ourselves, don’t speak in “we,” I’m sorry. I’m killing myself, maybe you are too, and sensitivity orgasmed with language.
I could orgasm with language, too.
I’m happiest when there’s a reason to put pen on paper, when the words spasm and shake out of my body, and if being a writer is sickness, the writing is hunched over a toilet heaving until your throat is red and raw and septic.
Before I started writing this, I was in that space between awake and dreaming, and I was watching more than anything because my writing meant something, someone read it and felt something, a lot of people felt something, and he didn’t know if I would want to see him, and the answer is yes, the answer will always be, unequivocally
Yes.
Gratitude
Some days, it’s harder to find things to be grateful for.
I’ve been anxious and upset and more on edge lately. Maybe I can attribute that to fears about coronavirus or more contact with my parents or my failure to internalize past traumas.
To be honest, I’ve also been bad about writing gratitude every day now. But at least I have a few things to keep me accountable.
