8
The Daily - Back to School 2020
Irika Sinha @guiltyviolet
Pink sunsets and Spotify playlists Coping with heartbreak in the world of ‘rona By Maya Tizon The Daily We met up in the middle of the night at a Starbucks parking lot that was halfway for both of us. I sat numb in his car for hours as he told me “this wasn’t the right time,” and “maybe if we met earlier or later this would’ve worked.,” At aand around 1 a.m., he ended our relationship with an “I hope one day we can at least be friends.” I drove away first. I could’ve waited for him to change his mind and take it all back, but I left as quickly as I could, avoiding my rearview mirror for one last look. I had officially experienced the beginning and end of a relationship entirely in quarantine. I met him last summer through mutual friends — he gave good hugs, always asked how I was doing. He admired my writing and read all my articles. I admired the way he danced, being a dancer myself. I thought we’d be good together, in this lifetime or any
other, and he felt the same. We had our first date at the start of lockdown. He made dinner at my apartment, and we clicked instantly. We spent nearly everyday together the weeks after, wandering the empty streets of Seattle as if we were the only people in the world. We’d sleep in every morning with no responsibilities to attend to, and talk all night about the things we could do once this was all over. It felt like a dream — I was completely mesmerized by him. I had relationships before, but these butterflies were new. For the first time, I thought I could’ve been in love. But dreams don’t last forever, and eventually we both woke up to realize that we had grievances from our pasts and different outlooks on the world that had started rapidly changing around us. “I don’t think I’m in love with you, but I do love you,” he said that night in the parking lot. We were together for three months, but after our breakup, my brain blocked out any memories I had of that time.
I drove myself crazy not knowing if he was even real or just one long quarantine delusion. At first, I tried to just bury it all. When the protests for George Floyd started, and especially after we broke up, I was in full survival mode, only focused on surviving a pandemic that felt like the government had abandoned us in, and the revolution against that same system that inflicted never-ending violence on Black and Indigenous people. I was terrified to just be alive, especially in this new world I only knew with him. I stayed awake most nights with anxiety attacks that made me lose my breath, and eventually the pain he left me with hit a boiling point — I had to deal with these emotions and move forward somehow. But I didn’t know how to do that anymore — I was too numb to write or do summer quarter work to distract me like how I usually deal with heartbreak, and just seeing my friends, let alone meeting new people, was still a risk. So how the f--- was I supposed to move on in a global pandemic?
