The Pandemic Made Me Do It

In this wretched pandemic, I had time to do a lot of things, to think a lot of things.

I didn’t come around to accomplishing the former; procrastination had taken root in me early in my non-pliant childhood. But the latter, that I did plenty. Or maybe, that’s all I did. All these thoughts just rolling through my head at one hundred miles per hour, slipping over one another, swamping my head.

Because that’s what it felt like – like I was swamped, pressed down, suffocated under their utter weight, under the scrutiny of my own self. And yes, you certainly are the harshest judge of yourself.

Most of these thoughts, though, were just noises, voices I was trying to stamp down but couldn’t. At one point, the most prominent of them was this single one, always flicking out from under the others: how it would be nice to have someone other than a parent, a sister, an old friend I can’t really talk to in my life. To vent out every one of my random thoughts to someone and spill out my deep and weird inclinations, to have them laughing; wouldn’t that be cute and warm. To share my highs and lows with someone when I can’t take it anymore; wouldn’t that be fluffy and cozy.

So I started talking to this guy online. I mean, I was a weird hybrid of millennial and gen Z, so why not act like it sometimes, you know?

Well, lucky me, someone did strike out, and he was not everything I hoped I’d find in a guy, but he came pretty close. And I thought, well, I’ve got to take what I’m getting – or some more dignified version of it anyway.

He would text me every day and talk like a funny and kind and considerate adult and not like an imbecilic frat boy whose only vocabulary is “what” and “is” and “up”; he would flirt and be cute sometimes in a non-cheesy manner and I could, in turn, be cute and funny in a way I didn’t know I’d enjoy; he would pop out with these random, hilarious texts or meaningful chunks of thoughts, or poems that were strangely not corny, and I wouldn’t really have to worry about our conversation being swollen with awkward pauses because mostly they flowed so smoothly. Well, it was my first of such encounters, so obviously I was kind of thrilled.

He asked me out (after the lockdown was to be lifted, of course); I said yes. He asked me out a month after that and I said yes then too.

And then, since he was also a millennial and maybe wanted to do his part in the universe, he ghosted me.

In case you don’t know what that term means, full disclosure: Complete disappearance. No texts anymore. No popping out sudden thoughts that kind of weirded me out but somehow, I’d managed not to mind. I texted then a couple of days after, then a couple of weeks after, and we had the same kind of smooth, easy conversations. But then again, there would come the eerily silence.

So.

I guess you’d inferred it already, but for the sake of clarity: No, we didn’t go out on a date. My precious precious date with a human boy in a long time, no.

Well, it wasn’t like I was heartbroken. I mean, my ego was, yes; it was bruised and wilted and had a hard time being puffed up again. But thankfully, we didn’t talk enough time to get to the heart part.

And yet, I am writing this, am I not?

Maybe we did get to the heart part, just a little bit.

Though this is more like the written version of wondering-out-loud, honestly. An attempt at sorting and sifting through the tangled web of those what-ifs and the never-should-haves and the oh-rights and the ugh-nos and the whys.

Just for the record, I do not regret those talks, or the fact that I had them. Because well, it really did occupy my mind and head at that time, and that’s all you want sometimes.

But was it more than that?

Was it due to the false sense of being pampered by the flirtations? Or was it the rare bliss of feeling fun myself and having somebody wordily corroborate that fact too? Or was it the sense of being listened to when I really wanted to rage at the world? Or was it simply just the pleasure of having meaningful (with a tinge of deep) conversations, where I didn’t have to rack my brain about what to say next?

Hell if I know. That was kind of the point of writing this. Writing officially doesn’t help anymore.

But well, I do know one thing: Sometimes we do need that one person who is not your parent or sister or relative. Someone to make you…feel the most you.

Sometimes. Because…why not?

And it is really stupid to pretend otherwise.

I mean, yes, it would be the sweet balm to our torn-and-threaded ego. Oh, it would be so sweet.

But in the long run, it would be really stupid to pretend otherwise. To pretend we don’t need the company of another person. Or the affection or the care or the pampering or just the existence.

But until we are not getting that, I guess writing and reading will do?