AROUND THE WORLD IN 180 SWIPES
The one place where I did find some godforsaken space, a solace impenetrable by interested moms or prying sisters, was Tinder. It felt weirdly safe. Password protected. Mine.
Being alone is easy. Loneliness is not. I felt it all at once: you know, a hand in a socket, electrical kind of high. Tingling spines, and pain—the constant ache of an empty indent. That’s what hurt the most, I think. An infinite emptiness and the insatiable desire to be held, to feel whole.
I should preface that I love being alone. I’m not afraid of the creeping sense of solitude that arises when the sun sets in my dorm room, and if anything, I welcome its call. It’s a comforting, familiar feeling. Especially as a twin who’s shared a room (and a life) for twenty years, being at Brown and away from my family for the first time has made being alone feel like coming home. I got to try on dorm rooms and posters and friends and nicknames in the comfort of my own company.
And so, I assumed a COVID-induced quarantine would be difficult, sure, but definitely doable. Naturally, I assumed wrong.
It wasn’t the isolation in itself, per se—it was leaving Brown, moving from my childhood home, roaming the halls of our new apartment like a ghost unsure of what it’s supposed to haunt. It was falling out with my oldest friend, losing my own room and my mind, quantifying my sophomore year in terms of Zoom calls that lasted way too long. It was the rush of change and the brink of insanity, one hand keeping myself from falling, the other furiously trying to keep myself together.
Suffice to say that being sent home was difficult, especially since home still feels so transient, an impossible word with an impossible meaning. Technically, home is now Queens, but really it’s Brooklyn, and also Goddard, where I ate home-cooked meals with my found family. And while I adore my actual family, quarantining with them felt like the first ever drag of a cigarette—an awkwardness that hurts. I was living with people who didn’t quite understand who I had grown into yet. I was inhaling smoke and choking on the ache of it.
The one place where I did find some godforsaken space, a solace impenetrable by interested moms or prying sisters, was Tinder. It felt weirdly safe. Password protected. Mine.
And amidst the influx of ads touting “togetherness in these unprecedented times,” Tinder didn’t disappoint, instead jumping on the opportunity to advertise Tinder Passport. Free for the month of April, the feature allowed users to “swipe” on people from beyond the confines of a fifty-mile radius. Suddenly, the whole world was fair game.
I was attention starved and Tinder Passport was the ultimate buffet. I visited Italy and England and Spain while wearing t-shirts I hadn’t seen since the heyday of AP Chemistry group projects. I didn’t have to explain newly adopted habits (exercising with Zoe on the weekends), or check in with parents on where I was going and with who (a walk on the boardwalk, alone). Quarantine was the longest period of time I had lived with my family since I had started at Brown and with each passing day I was becoming more and more aware of how different we had all become, of how simultaneously old and young I felt, of how much I missed my friends. Tinder Passport was unbridled access to a person I wanted to be, a ticket to places I longed to see.
Within my first week swiping my way across the countryside of France, I met Warren. He was a dream, a picturesque Venus from the rising tide coming to greet me. We talked about our favorite movies (Before Sunset and Lady Bird), how he was a trained actor, how I was taking screenwriting classes. I can almost smell the rosé he said he’d bring for me, my hands already know the feel of the letter he said he’d write for me, dense with inside jokes, the ones about meeting halfway in Greenland and our inevitable Netflix deal. He texted paragraphs of how he’d romance me on our first date with roses and picnics and wine, and when texting got old, he sent voice memos over Instagram. Oh—and his voice. His voice was so sweet, his French pure saccharine. He spoke with a familiar warmth, the kind you could sink into. Often, I’d listen to him before I went to sleep (timezoned) and I’d close my eyes and let the deepness of his voice merge with the deep dark of my bedroom.
I fell into Warren when everything else was falling apart. He was a way to exist beyond the walls of our newly minted Queens apartment. Suddenly, isolation was passionate, endued with a valiant craving, the setting to my very own Romeo and Juliet tragedy. I wanted so badly to stargaze in the park on the blue duvet he spoke so highly of, to believe that the entire world was exactly one Tinder conversation wide. Warren was so giving with his love, with his words. I was (am) greedy. Desperate for distraction. Emotionally withdrawn. The list goes on. Being with Warren was to make promises in the eye of a hurricane.
Warren and I kept in contact for a dizzying whirlwind of a month. I was the one who ended things. (I usually am. Consider it a symptom of being a repressed romantic. I adore the chase and panic at the catch). I still think about him, though. I practice what I’d say. A sorry mix of apologies and thanks and well wishes. He was always better at being romantic than I was.
At some point, Warren casually mentioned that he'd love to visit me sometime over the summer, back when we still believed it’d only take a month to flatten the curve. The sentiment was saturated with a sort of naive hopefulness that I drank up. Warren let me envision wine-drunk summers, sipping away the evening and slipping into each other. He gave me permission to dream of a world where travel was possible again, where we could hold hands, and kiss, and be unabashedly intimate free of computer screens and phones.
He casually mentioned that plane tickets to New York weren’t all that expensive after all. How he was going to wrap up shooting in July. He spoke of the roses, and the wine, and the picnic. Warren let me practice romance and affection and closeness, yes, but the sudden practicality of coordinating schedules and looking up flights scared me to my core. I was jolted awake, roused from my rose-colored haze. Warren was always so open, so willing, and present, and it struck me with the realization that our conversations were spilling over into the realm of real world repercussions.
Meeting Warren in person would have been fun, sure, but agreeing to that, actually telling that man to take a flight to another country, demanded a level of commitment that I knew was utterly out of reach for me. Warren always seemed so emotionally within reach, while, mentally, I was busy touring South America and roaming the Swiss mountainside from my phone. I was miles away from where I needed to be—on Tinder, and in real life too. At that point, it had been a long while since I had even engaged with Queens beyond a place of physical dwelling. I had become accustomed to how my bed felt, but not much else. I hadn’t been to the beach in weeks. I forgot what it felt like to lose myself in the sand and let the ocean spray call me to the water. The caress of salt eroding away fears and time—and loneliness. Instead of texting back Warren, I had dinner with my sister that night.
I adored Warren and I adored the freedom he offered me. But there reached a point where I had to log off and explore everything that had been lying in front of me the entire time. To live.
AUTHOR: Rose Diaz is in her third year at Brown and is constantly wondering why it rains so much in Providence. She’s studying literary arts and enjoys spending way too much time pursuing random bookstores in her small, completely unheard-of hometown of NYC.
ARTIST: Angie Kang is in her final year of school. For breakfast, she likes both oranges and hardboiled eggs, but only really enjoys peeling the latter. Find more of her work here.