What it’s Like to Quarantine with Someone You’re Not So Sure You’re Going to End up With
“He brings me a latte every morning, whether I’m basically asleep or I’m working across the table from him. We make dinner and play board games, we’ve binged three Netflix shows and had countless conversations about how weird the world is right now. We haven’t fought, but he gets hangry and forgets to eat (it seems) and so I move rooms when he’s grumpy. I find I crave his attention at his busiest hours. I’ve smoked less weed, but he’s been smoking more. We shower together, both the sexy kind and the “purely-this-is-business-it’s-cold” kind. So far I’ve loved every minute of spending the global pandemic with him.”
When I wrote this, I had just begun quarantining with my boyfriend, for what we thought would be at MOST 3 weeks. For context, because understanding the passage of time is hard these days, our first weekend of quarantine was spent in a remote cabin getaway. Netflix’s Tiger King had just premiered; of course we binged it immediately. At the time, I was clearly exhilerated, nervous, thrilled, or whatever, to spend an indefinite amount with him. Or the end of the world. Because at the time, that’s what 2020 was and still feels like. The end of the fucking world.
A week, eventually turned into a month, and now seven months later, we are back in our *separate* homes in the Bay Area trying to make sense of the crapshoot year 2020 has been. Clearly, we all had plans for 2020. He actually had a job opportunity that was going to relocate him (and subsequently me, per his invitation) to Germany. But, the one thing 2020 has taught me is plans change.
During this time, I’ve had friends lose loved ones, end relationships, move out of town, all at the mercy of this pandemic. I consider Jack and I’s relationship to be serious, or at least for me, the one I’ve taken the most seriously. But, WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?! What does it mean if I don’t end up with the guy I spent the global pandemic with? Probably nothing. I wrote that soppy-ass paragraph as a part of a larger essay to try to understand what it means to be in love during such an uncertain time. And I’ve come to learn a lot since asking that question at the beginning of March.
Especially, now more than ever, when it feels like this pandemic purposefully sniffs out amazing life opportunities or life in general and extinguishes it. And if it’s not that, something else is around the corner. Unfortunately, despite the wild west that is Donald Trump’s America and coronavirus, for most young people we are in an era of major decision making. And making a commitment or major decision freaks us the fuck out. But in reality, when you look at a decision as a culmination of your life events, or the decisions you’ve made over time, you realize you’re more prepared to make a decision than you thought. Because you’ve been making decisions that have to lead you in that direction the entire time. You never really were certain, but actually, you really were.
Committing to things makes us feel like there is a future ahead of us. Not to project, but the irony in committing to something, or rather someone, during this time is laughable. For me, I am committing to the person who is currently in the other room, making me a latte (yes, he STILL does that). This pandemic has put us all in a scarcity mindset. Remember the toilet paper?!. But what I am coming to learn is commitment doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Commitment helps us clarify the now. Not the future. We’ll never know what the future holds; pandemic or no pandemic. We are still growing and changing even when the world feels like it’s standing still (but also on fire at the same time). And somehow, Jack and I have managed to stick together through it all. Not to say it was easy. That lovely paragraph where I dote over his excellence in understanding my needs, has had its ups and downs. I imagine most people who are with someone right now feel the same way. We’re all handling this pandemic differently, and ipso facto handling our relationships differently.
It clearly wasn’t sustainable to live in a small wood surrounded cabin with a population of 80 when this pandemic began to creep into early April. And as we all know now, November is around the corner. And shockingly (or not so shockingly), we are in fact celebrating 2 years of fast outright friendship and lovemaking! Who’ da thought? So pandemic aside, 2020 wasn’t so bad because I had you, right by my side, reminding me the sun will come up tomorrow, even when we don’t know what the fuck the future will look like.
