A few thoughts on love

This should be a fun one.

"Perpetually Platonic" or "Sophia's Spectacular Single Life" were some alternative titles for this entry, but this newsletter will not be devoted to all my incredible experiences as a single person or all the wonderful platonic love in my life. Instead, I want to talk about what I lack.

Many of you have probably heard me refer to my love and sex life as “a series of unfortunate events” and by that, I’m barely joking. A few of the most entertaining stories include…

         The Bad Beginning
         The Terrible Teeth
         The Nefarious Nipple Twister
         The Halloweekend Horrors 
         The Pulp Fiction Peril

And on and on and on….

I won’t be telling these stories here. I’m saving them for my scripts where I can pretend they didn’t happen quite like they did or pretend they didn’t happen to me at all. But I do want to reflect on where all my many misfortunes have brought me.

I love romantic love. The idea of it anyway. But I’m attached to my individual strictly single life. It’s all I’ve known. I’ve been the single friend so long that it’s a part of my identity. Bring me your commitmentphobic and brokenhearted! I’m your gal. And despite the benefits of the single life (I don’t owe anyone my time or more of myself than I’m willing to give - I can pick up and move across the country without conversation or the need to “figure things out” because it’s only me and my mountain of shoes), I yearn to experience one of those elusive romantic relationships I hear so much about.

They say you’ll meet someone when you least expect it.

If you say this to me one more time, I might break a lampshade over your head EVEN THOUGH I know you’re kind of right. I’ve been waiting for years, and I’m always expecting it. I don’t know how to turn that part of my brain off, and my insistence on looking for love at every turn is at least partially to blame for some of those unfortunate events I’ve listed above. I get my hopes up about the wrong people and become determined to make things happen. I want attention, the way that I want it. And people are rarely able to instinctively guess what I have in mind.

My mother has advised me “to be open.” And I think I have been. I’ve told people to their faces that I like them. I’ve asked people to hang out and even did that stupid flirty thing of unnaturally touching someone on the arm.¹ It doesn’t mean those people were open to me. My being open also doesn’t extend to everyone. After a lot of failed attempts, comically bad meet-cutes, and a few actually hurtful ones, my love life has reached a bit of a plateau.

Let me set a scene:

A fair maiden with great wit and blonde hair lies on her fainting couch while lamenting with two of her closest compatriots.

The young maiden cries, “I don’t understand! [NAME REDACTED] never called, texted, or sent a carrier pigeon. I know it’s foolish to be upset-”

One compatriot: “It’s not silly!”

Fair maiden: “I’m upset about [NAME REDACTED], but it’s also the fact that this is yet another fail. A complete non-starter. I don’t get what I’m doing wrong. Why does it seem so easy for some people? In my depression spiral today I started looking up being asexual and started thinking maybe that has to be me, even though I want to have sex and fall in love.”

Both compatriots: “Asexual people don’t want to have sex!!!”

Fair maiden: “But still!”

I’m not recounting this not to make fun of or minimize asexuality. Asexuality can be extremely varied and absolutely fulfilling and fantastic. I don’t identify as asexual, but I’ve often questioned it when I felt lost searching for an identity or label to explain why I’ve had such a hard time with something that seems easy for everyone else. At my lowest moments, I can’t help thinking there’s something wrong. I must be bringing these unfortunate events on myself, because other people are out here having satisfying hook-ups, going to amusement parks with their so-called soulmates, and getting their lives together. If love hasn’t happened yet, maybe it’s just not going to.

But like the Baudelaires’ story, sometimes it’s just bad luck.

I’m lucky in a lot of ways I’m extremely thankful for. Romance just hasn’t been one of them. At least not yet. And I know so many people are in that same boat too. But I have faith that luck changes. And I have so much love in my life from other places. I love my family. I love my friends. I love myself. And most of the time that’s more than enough.

I’ll end with my favorite literary love declaration, which I did not write:

“I will love you if I never see you again, and I will love you if I see you every Tuesday. I will love you as the starfish loves a coral reef and as kudzu loves trees, even if the oceans turn to sawdust and the trees fall in the forest without anyone around to hear them. I will love you as the pesto loves the fettuccini and the horseradish loves the miyagi, and the pepperoni loves the pizza. I will love you as the manatee loves the head of lettuce and as the dark spot loves the leopard, as the leech loves the ankle of a wader and as a corpse loves the beak of the vulture. I will love you as the doctor loves his sickest patient and a lake loves its thirstiest swimmer. I will love you as the beard loves the chin, and the crumbs love the beard, and the damp napkin loves the crumbs, and the precious document loves the dampness of the napkin, and the squinting eye of the reader loves the smudged document, and the tears of sadness love the squinting eye as it misreads what is written.

I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat, and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp... I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled. I will love you until every fire is extinguished and rebuilt from the handsomest and most susceptible of woods. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where once we were so close... I will love you until your face is fogged by distant memory. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, I will love you if you don't marry me. I will love you if you marry someone else--and i will love you if you never marry at all, and spend your years wishing you had married me after all. That is how I will love you even as the world goes on its wicked way.”

―Lemony Snicket, The Beatrice Letters

And now for a love letter of my own:

“One of these days someone’s going to love me for all that I am. They’ll love me with my acne scars and cracked knuckles. Love me for overdressing for every dinner with an outfit that’s just walking the line of going together. Love that I always have a wall calendar but never write anything on it. How I write even when it isn’t the most eloquent. They won’t care about my constantly chipped nail polish. They’ll like that I’m a raging feminist that fantasizes about being swept off her feet. They’ll understand and maybe even appreciate why I’m determined to wear red on my wedding day.

This someone will probably have things they don’t like about me even though they love me so much. Maybe they can’t stand the way I love to stare at my own reflection in windows and street signs. Or how I summarize TV shows they haven’t seen in painstaking detail. It’ll probably be the fact I never throw out anything and own three copies of the same book (even though it’s my favorite)². Or my habit of leaving my disposable contacts around the house. But that won’t matter because they’ll love the way I do all the other things. How I laugh like a seal when I get carried away. My smile. And I’ll love their laugh and melt at their smile, which will be better than all the smiles that made me momentarily melt before because it’ll finally be for me. Maybe even because of me. Some dumb joke I made or because we’re both so happy to have found each other finally after so many misses, journal entries, and tears.

Maybe it won’t last and I’ll be devastated. I’ll try meeting new people to realize it’s just not the same. Maybe they’ll be a stepping stone towards something or someone better. Or we’ll just keep walking through life together finding things to love about each other, laughing during sex, and watching each other’s favorite movies. Maybe years from now I’ll sit on the floor laughing at this old entry. I’ll say ‘Look here. This was when I had no one to write love letters to so I wrote them to myself.’ They’ll laugh softly, kiss me, and promise to write me a truly fantastic love letter one of these days instead of just texting two words, but I won’t care because I already know they love me and I’m the writer anyway.

Then I’ll write them a love letter with all my sappiest quotes and most tired metaphors. The ‘I love your…’s and the ‘…I adore you forever and always” will just flow out of me. Or as they fall asleep next to me, I’ll pull out a new journal and write another letter to myself. Proud of how made it through all those years worrying I’d never find love, and happy I was able to imagine being loved that much. I’ll tell myself that despite the mistakes that made me want to disappear, how I look, how I change, and whether I’ve truly found someone to love, I am and have always been complete.

Whoever you are, wherever you are - you who I hope to love - I hope for now you love yourself and I’ll try to do the same.

Yours,

Sophia”³

Recommendations for this Era

• A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snickett

• “I Love How You Love Me” by Bobby Vinton

• Journaling (commit to it!)

• A Series of Unfortunate Events, the Netflix series

• all about love by bell hooks

• “Lonely People” by America⁴

A Non-Love Letter for this Era

To all the boys I’ve loved (well, let’s be real I wasn’t in love with you)... 
To all the boys and girls I was attracted to and/or had a crush on: 
         I’m sorry if it was as awkward for you as it was for me. 
         A small few of you were funny, and I have no doubt you've worked what we had into an entertaining anecdote. Those of you without a sense of humor, I’m more sorry you can't use our hilariously unfortunate interactions. 
         But seriously, I’m sorry if I was immature. I'm sorry if I made you feel bad. I'm sorry to the one specific one of you I blackballed from my Halloween party when it's very possible you simply didn't understand I was asking you out. Then again, I'm not sorry, because afterwards you seemed like a creep. 
         I'm sorry for the one friendship I ruined, and I’m also not sorry at all because I was honest, even though you thought I was just drunk.
          And finally, although he'll never read it, I’m NOT sorry to you, Pulp Fiction poster, because you're an idiot for trying to "give back" a girl her virginity after she's repeatedly politely declined. 

1. Nauseating.

2. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

3. This is an edited entry from my April 2021 journal.

4. This is seriously a great song!