One step at a time

Disclaimer: This is a fictional piece with some bits from my life. It's a piece I wrote about loving in the pandemic. It's how I want to remember this year when i look back at it. I hope you find some comfort in this.

The year 2021 brought forth a lot of changes in the world. Be it environmental, medical, political, social, cultural or emotional. The Covid-19 pandemic hit the entire world with an unprecedented force. A shift in lifestyles and relationships took place without a warning when the Covid-19 pandemic hit. The pandemic stripped us of our existing ways of looking at ourselves and the world. Though it seemed like we had all the time in the world. Everything suddenly became mortal. Everything had a deadline, quite literally. Amidst this fast tracked world, love became a task. 

Along with danger and caution, the pandemic brought love and affection. At least for me. Love in the pandemic was an unparalleled experience. At a time when I was trying to run away from my own family, coming to terms with my identity, thoughts and emotions; I found love in tea breaks and phone calls. This was the same time when I was drowning in my mental health issues and I ended up finding laughter in the strangest of places. Falling in love in the pandemic was as much a privilege as was living under a roof. It kept me alive when everything else pushed for the alternative. Validation of my deepest thoughts, and queerest secrets. Learning how to love and be loved as I went through it all; being with my partner proved to be an unusual outlet for all of it. The pandemic forced us to put on new masks and take off the ones that we had on for the longest time. There were times when I often questioned how I wanted my relationship to look like - the structure and composition of it. I was questioning the monogamous nature of my relationship. But the constriction that the pandemic came with made, living, loving and questioning nearly impossible.

When the world started fighting against the Covid-19 pandemic, I was fighting my own battles. My identity, or the lack of it in that moment trapped me. I was scrambling to find some sense of safety and comfort.. Sometimes the spine chilling fear attached with love did not seem worth it. The hushed conversations, and stolen kisses were costing me my safety. Loving at the cost of being beaten by the police did not seem as romantic when it became a reality. The possibility of being homeless, shunned, abused and violated exponentially increased and some of it even came true. Love felt like a privilege I could not afford. The pandemic forced me to put myself in a small box, forget who I was, what I believed in, and stay in there. Stay in there without making a sound, or moving an inch. I was not allowed to come out of that box, for if I did, the coronavirus would not be my only cause of death. Falling in love in a place that allowed me to be who I was, was only a dream I dreamt of.

Being confined in a space that controlled and monitored my every moment resulted in anxiety and depression becoming common visitors. In times like these, the idea of what it is to love changed drastically. The conventional idea of physical proximity was no longer a possibility. The trust that could be formed before the pandemic was nowhere to be found. Everything turned upside down. Apart from the daily violence and screams in my home, my mind became a disrupted space. The place that I had called home, now became a battleground for bloodshed. Everything became a fight. In the middle of this never ending battle, falling in love and choosing to stay in it every single day, was nearly impossible. This is precisely why my relationship ended. Falling in love was one thing. But the pandemic turned it into a reminder of everything that went wrong. For there was nowhere to run and hide. The painful realization that I could no longer be with the woman I was in love with made me go through my own personal hell, every day.

Ipshita Nath in an article called “Love and Lockdown: What kind of tragic romances will be written after the pandemic” talks about how broken relationships in the time period of the pandemic should be given a special space like all other aspects of social settings. The article talks about how it is only fair that people who lost love, get another chance once these circumstances change. They should get a chance to try again, to give each other the benefit of doubt. If everything in the world is getting the space and time to adapt to new changes, so should love. We cannot treat relationships like spoils of war. They gave us something worth living for, at a time when merely surviving was a task.

It's an unimaginable pain to lose yourself in a relationship. The memories that I wanted to remember forever start fading away and turn into incomplete mementos. All that time that I spent trying not to forget, flashed before me. I was consciously aware of the little details slipping away from me. The desperation of weanting to hold on to everything in a tight embrace for just another moment has been etched into my mind. The pandemic brought my worst fears to reality. But it also gave my relationship a space to grow that I did not have before. The physical setting of it all led to intimacy being expressed in different ways. The meaning of ‘Being together’ changed. The vulnerability and intimacy that I felt when I shared my worst moments with my partner were ones that I wanted to hold on to forever. And as all of this started slipping away from me, I decided to do something about it. I wrote obsessively.

I was paranoid about forgetting; anything and everything.  I wanted to document every little detail so intricately that when I'm sixty years old, I will be able to remember it. I’ll be able to remember how my favorite plant smelled the morning it died. I did not want to forget anything. I was afraid of the panic and shame I would feel if I didn't remember moments of my life when I needed to the most. This paranoia stayed with me throughout. So naturally, forgetting love was out of the question. I couldn’t imagine the pain of not remembering what my partner said to me the night I fell in love. Or not remembering the first song I listened to on the morning of my 19th birthday. 

Heartbreak was magnified in the most unfair of ways during this period.  Iwas living through  this pain everyday. The pandemic led to my days looking identical. The same routine over and over again. It was as if time stopped but at the worst possible moment. Along with loving, some of the most basic actions became dreadful. Confronting my thoughts was the worst part of the pandemic; an unavoidable truth of sorts. One that would creep up on me the second I let my guard down. They would set me up for disappointment by showing me what love could have been had the circumstances not interfered. These thoughts would take me down some of the darkest nights of my life. The most frightening of thoughts clouded my mind, and I became my worst enemy. They were like parasites that ate me from the inside out. However, they weren't always bad. Sometimes they would give me hope; shapeshift into a little girl who held me tight, and whispered “It’s going to be okay”. Or they would show me nights when I sat for hours near the kitchen window talking to the woman I loved across the street. I would try to hold my laughter in and listen to her talk till the sun rose. It was only in these moments that I felt free from the chokehold of my mind. Devoid of physical touch, human comfort and stripped of any sense of normalcy or familiarity, I was slowly losing all parts of myself. I was stuck right on the edge, waiting for the next big step of my life. Everything felt uncertain and I felt unprepared for what was coming next. 

When all this was happening, love didn't swoop in like the knight in shining armor. It just stood there. Silently watching, waiting for the right time to peak and make me smile on the worst days. It wrote fictional books with me in the middle of the night to distract me from my home. It sang me songs and taught me how to play the guitar. Love learned sign language with me so we could talk to each other in the middle of  the night. It stood through fights at home and beatings on the street. Love stayed as silently as it eventually left.

One of the things that the pandemic offered me was time. The fact that in this unprecedented time I found a way to heal and love parts of myself that I could not face before made it all worth it.  The fact that I mended ways with my family, made it all worth it. To love and be loved in a global crisis is a surreal feeling. Be it romantic, platonic, familial or self-love, that feeling never goes away. The experience of feeling something in such an all-consuming manner kept me going. And when it was taken away from me, I learnt how to fight. Love in the pandemic was like a lifeboat. It kept me alive when I needed it most. Falling in love with the people I lived with since I was a child felt like I was seeing them as individuals for the first time. They came out of their roles as my mother, sister and father. It was a liberating feeling to love someone for the first time after knowing them my entire life. 

Trying to catch a breath,

Maahi