What the f*ck are we doing?

On reading, love, and current state of personal affairs.

Mar 26, 2023

L came by the house with a birthday gift for a wine night at our place. A book1 she was already reading and wanted me to check. An act which is a gift itself. I want you to consider what I’m currently considering. This feels good for me and i feel it will be good for you. An act of love.

It made me happy, it’s a book I would never read. The books of this author talk about modern love and I told L and D that I don’t want to read things that are so relatable. They make me sad in a sense.

Reading is about enjoying good writing at this point of my life, escaping too. I’m currently going over Giovanni’s room by James Baldwin. It takes place in an era I’ll never live, it’s a story about a type of love I’ll never feel. Good and bad things happen to people that I’ll never be. It’s great writing that I can enjoy while being detached.

In any case, as much as I can’t read about modern love at this point, I will absolutely talk about it and have LOTS to say. It’s all we end up talking about with my single friends. We circle our arguments around the following questions. Is it the apps? Are people afraid, too comfortable? Are we just too ugly? Not lovable? Why are people not having sex anymore? Or are they having and we are not invited?

I don’t fucking know. I wish this generation thought much less. Weighted things less. Too many Greeks, not enough Romans.

I tell L that maybe we just don’t want to mess up love like our parents, how many of us experienced our parents separating in some ugly way and we swore to our god that we would not repeat this. We would choose better, we wouldn’t get married without really knowing the person, we wouldn’t have kids without reading all the parenting books, without being sure that we can raise them.

A fallacy. I’m glad I was born even if I do have to pay for therapy now. I guess my kids can do the same. There is no perfect parent anyway. You can be a bad parent and your kid might get to become a better person, you are a great parent and your kid just can’t imagine life without you.

Something will probably go south anyway.

Another one is rejection. Feeling ugly, feeling unworthy of attention from a possible mate. Feeling someone is out of your reach. Better than you. I have a good friend who is afraid to talk to women so to not be perceived like a creep. So yeah girls and boys, someone for sure wanted to come up and talk to you, romanticised you, imagined they had babies with you. Something just made them too afraid to go for it. You’ve done the same with someone too.

At some moment, when stars align, both will talk to each other, playlists will be created, hands will be held. I refuse to believe that it’s all doom and gloom.

But anyway, why is it important? Let’s get the whole retaining the species argument aside. Why is everyone craving love? If you are still asking this question, I feel bad for you.

People want to be loved. They want to belong. They want to have sex. They want to be validated. All proper things.

People also need mirrors. You can have a myriad of good friends, a big family and still the only thing that shakes your core will be that person with the flaky black hair, miniature statue and emo personality that for some reason you have convinced they are the only person that can give you what you want in life.

You have projected everything on to them and now they need to play by your script and if they don’t but still try to tease you with their presence, they will challenge your person in unimaginable ways. You will not be the same man or woman. Priceless god damn it. Scary too.

That scary that we can’t seem to get on with it? Maybe.

A psychiatrist we had at uni told me three things in our one and only session.

◦ You are lucky your family is fucked. That way you can move on with your life.

◦ Leave for another country where you don’t speak the language. That way you won’t care what people are talking about, you’ll take insults less seriously. You’ll take everything less seriously.

◦ Guilt will be your biggest enemy. Kill it in every corner.

I was shocked at her direct approach. Where is the analysis? why don’t we talk about all the ways my mother didn’t breastfeed me, why are you asking me to live without thinking so much?

We end the conversation with a couple of outstanding Canarian wines2 , we still have no answers and neither hope that the night will bring us closer to a possible mate. We look for food and end up to another wine place with a hummus option on the menu (ha! who would have thought). I point to D how most men here have moustaches so he shouldn’t feel bad about his recent attempt to one. We drink some more and there comes the point where I start feeling like I love the world and things are so simple and we just have to come closer to each other and everything will be fine.

I might have also tried to convince them to drive to the airport and go spent the rest of the night flying to Japan. The cray idea is followed by a five minute conversation about all the things we would do if we were there.

Japan is too far fetched so my second hope is for D and L to look at each other with different eyes after all the wine. They are both single, quite similar, both looking for love. There’s something missing though that neither can pin point.

I remind myself that I’m not aunty Sima from Indian Matchmaking and maybe my focus on others is an escape from resolving my own lack in love. Perhaps, I’d like to see others making it look easy.

If you reached until here you are probably thinking what the fuck am I talking about.

I don’t know. Not yet. Sometimes I have so many thoughts I feel the spoken word is not enough, I need the written word. I’d like to also express them in a meaningful way for the ones close to me to understand me.

I’ll be adding nothing of value to the the shit show of internet writing. That feels great. No one’s really looking anyway.

If you do decide to keep looking, there are some topics I hope to write about soon: