Falling in love during lockdown

Before the Covid crisis took over our collective life, I was having a kind of a crisis of my own, purely existential of course. Maybe this was just a case of being 29-nearly-30, either way, it seemed like a storm that had been a lifetime brewing and was bursting into more than the odd rainy day.

For about 9 months I’d felt almost constantly overwhelmed, on edge and unsure of the point of me. Except for the 7 days that I spent in the Himalayas, where my mind felt as clear as the mountain air, it was well-clouded by a cocktail of (well-founded) eco-despair, the scratchy stuck record of my relationship history and frequent companionship of a loud lack of belonging. An incessant inner commentary was covering a losing game, in which all the things I should’ve done by now were savagely winning against all those I had.

There is something in turning 30… a higher measure on the pressure metre perhaps. Everyone always says it’s much better once you’re there, it’s the bit just before. Maybe it becomes harder to distract from the mess; those tricks are worn out, it’s time to tidy up.

I got dumped / ghosted (getting nothing is worse than dumped in a way) a few weeks before Christmas, for the 3rd time in a row, after 15 years of largely implosive relationships. I started to see that I’d seen love as something you earn, have to prove you deserved. And…