LOVE, REDEFINED

After much trial and error, I have learned to seek love in my surroundings, and I continue to find it in the places I least expect.

I found love through the pandemic. By now, that sentence has probably become a cliché -- almost everyone I know, myself included, has spent some time in a quarantine romance of sorts. I suppose I could write about someone I’ve been talking to every day for the past four months, despite the fact that I’ve never met them in real life and that they’re 9,500 miles away, but that’s a story for another time. To be fair, there is love there, but as I have come to learn, it is certainly not the only kind that matters, let alone the most important. The pandemic has helped me rediscover love, and allowed me to define it for myself. It has taught me to accept love in all of its infinite incarnations, and to practice loving outside of the norm. Love is diverse by its very nature, and over quarantine I have had the opportunity to explore its platonic and aromantic forms. 

Sometime last year, between papers and problem sets, rushed assignments and hectic job searches, I forgot what it was like to feel loved -- to be so taken with a moment that everything in the periphery seemed trivial. I had forgotten what it felt like to be swept off my feet like I had been in past relationships, to be so suddenly and completely enamored with a person that even the slightest utterance of their name on my lips could make me awash with emotion. And although it certainly isn’t the pandemic’s fault that I’m single, it has at times exacerbated feelings of loneliness, particularly physical. Not being able to come into contact with people reminded me how much I missed being loved by a person, how someone’s bare skin merely grazing against mine was enough to give me goosebumps, how the affectionate embrace of someone I held dear could render me instantly weak. For the longest time, I understood love as valid only if it provided a sense of physical comfort, only if it was reciprocated, and only if it was romantic. 

My initial search for love during the pandemic was bound by these statutes, driven by unquenchable lust and a fervent desire for intimacy. For a while it sufficed to be on multiple dating apps, swiping mindlessly through stacks of photos and responding to any messages that came my way. My friends and I shared between us hundreds of screenshots from conversations that sparked our romantic intrigue and spent more time discussing them than I care to admit. At the peak of my desperation, I allowed my friends to make a dating profile for me on “Subtle Muslim Dating,” a Facebook page dedicated to guiding young Muslims in their soul-searching journeys. Unfortunately, this did little to alleviate my loneliness (unless you count the onslaught of inappropriate messages from creepy fifty-year-olds as companionship). Frustrated by the experience, I temporarily denounced love, claiming that it wasn’t for me and that I was better off alone. 

But, as I have learned, love certainly is for me. When quarantine guidelines limited my exposure to a tight-knit pod, it dawned upon me just how much I missed friends and family all over the world, and my yearning for romantic encounters was soon quelled by love in other forms. Although the pandemic made it incredibly difficult to stay connected across regions and time zones, as an international student, I had somewhat of an advantage. I am more than familiar with the heartache that comes from prolonged separation, and maintaining relationships with loved ones over FaceTime, Messenger and WhatsApp has long since become normal. I have mastered the arts of Netflix parties and online multiplayer games, snapchat streaks and Zoom study sessions. I have grown accustomed to tired and rushed ‘I love you’s from people I haven’t seen in years, and I’ve come to appreciate their honesty. As more of my friendships became long-distance, my expertise in the field of virtually expressing love proved itself essential. My platonic and familial relationships served as a reminder that experiences of love could be genuine and thrive even in the absence of romance.  

The pandemic taught me not only that romance is not a precondition of love, but also that love could exist on its own, and that it did not require the validation of another.  During quarantine, I was forced to spend more time alone than ever before, and without my friends’ presence, I struggled to feel loved. Unbeknownst to me, I was surrounded by love, and this became clear as I explored different avenues of self-care and spent quality time with myself. After much trial and error, I have learned to seek love in my surroundings, and I continue to find it in the places I least expect. I have fallen in love with the fragrant waft of perfectly steeped tea leaves that envelops my kitchen most mornings, the tunes that I quietly hum to myself as I click away at my keyboard, and the satisfying feeling of paper crinkling between my fingertips as I flip through my favorite Bengali novels. Imbued with an appreciation for the fleeting instances only I can create, I am learning to love myself more every day.

In my futile (and somewhat embarrassing) past attempts to find an all-encompassing, romantic “true” love, I unfairly ignored a kind of omnipresent love, one that sought to be absorbed into my being and demanded I embrace it. At long last it is visible to me, manifesting, for example, in the elbow bumps that my friends and I now substitute for hugs. It can be observed in the hours I spend struggling, over poor connections and language differences, to replicate age-old family recipes my mother shares over phone calls. It exists in the wonder that compels me to capture photos of fiery-orange sunsets at India Point Park, in my amateur attempts at poetry, in the meals I cook for my roommates, and in the moments I spend allowing myself to love. 

I seek solace in a different kind of love now; one that does not necessitate lust or deem romance a prerequisite, one that stands fiercely at odds with my harmful internal dialogue and insists that I am enough. One that reminds me constantly that I am loved, simply because I allow myself to love profoundly and unconditionally, and because I have redefined what “true love” means to me.

AUTHOR: Faiza Chowdhury is a senior at Brown studying South Asian Studies and Applied Mathematics. Her favorite pastimes include making tea, singing in the shower and writing haikus in different languages.

ARTIST: China Saxton