love as a shrine / fifty foot woman.

a mediation on the voyeuristic, the alleged disingenuous, and love digitized.

andi venegas.

as i get older i find that i tend to knock out more walls to invent room for what i never considered.

Is this positivity? No, but I think it’s nuance, and my mind rounded out by my ever-transforming age.

Lately, I’ve been thinking of a while back when I saw a TikTok of a queer couple lying together in the rain. They were inside their bedroom, the lights off but a candle on, and the window was open. There was no sound, only the din of the storm they were “sleeping” through.

The two men pressed together tightly, absorbing the other’s warmth. Cast across the floor was memorabilia of their life together: books, clothing, a lost pillow, a loosened sheet.

It was beautiful and I think I saved it, though I don’t remember what for. I often track down things that encapsulate a feeling and curate a selection of media and art that hones it into a steady, potent beam of emotion that permeates me.

But most of all I remember the comments. Most of it was the typical “in the far corner you can see me walking into traffic” ones, sentiments that annoy me for reasons that this piece is not about. But there were others, more of “Wow look at this totally genuine moment between me and my partner that I set up the tripod to capture and post online” with over a thousand likes.

I sat with the words for a while. There was honesty there, I can’t deny it. But some part of me was irritated. I had viewed it more as a person wanting to film this to memorialize their lover and revisit the feeling. He had captured the video to watch again later, maybe on a flight home or for a time void of the person he loved.

I do it all the time and watch them during the nine/ten/eleven hours I spend in the air, back and forth from home to school and home again. Part of me is hoping someone is looking at me and seeing the people I love, finding them beautiful too. Part of me is hoping that the same person is looking away so I can shelter my tears into my throat's anxious, tight swallow.

Maybe I’m naïve but I hadn’t seen it as exploitative or disingenuous. I’d seen it as normal and likened it to what I do when I take photos and frame them on my thick, cream walls. I’d seen it as showing others what life could be like too.

I think that is naïve. More and more, I realize I am the baby of my family.

I guess I view these acts—these posts—as more a reminder than a performance. I don’t mind that it may expose me as a voyeur to love. I want to be softened, to remind myself (as

Julianna

‘s note said) to relax my shoulders and unclench my jaw.

Often, I feel as though the world rocks back and forth on a pendulum between an avid lust for life and a deep desire for nonchalance. And while I understand the urge to go through life feeling numb, the thought scares me. I need there to be room for love, tripod and all.

Recently I told a friend I approach life so rawly because I view it as an intense thing and think that to live it instead of just surviving it, you have to meet it dead on. Just as strongly. I said I felt like nonchalance comes from the idea of having to hold out somewhat and not necessarily make life your own.

That’s what the emotion does. That’s what the grief and the joy and the love do. It stains it in ways you can’t clean. My life looks nothing like my mother’s, my sisters’, or my friends’. Regardless, it’s mine and through my records—whether it be a swollen camera roll or my suffering phone storage due to sporadic filming—I have proof.

The digitalization of love seems to trigger a state of reflection in a person, an exploration of what they have and what they want and if they are going after it.

It’s not that I don’t understand how it may come across as disingenuous. There are times when I’ve unfollowed creators because I’ve been so over their obvious displays for the camera. Of course, this is influenced by my own biases.

pinterest.

My top love languages are quality time (hence the video of the couple sleeping) and words of affirmation, followed closely by gifts. This means most public displays of affection feel over the top for me and attention-seeking, something I’ll need to unpack on my own.

But resting right next to that is the insistent distress stemming from the notion that I am not like everyone else. That I’m behind.

The TikToks others mock expose me to people in different corners of the world who existed and still exist in the same way with the same lack of experience or luck in love. And their posts, their happy ending reaffirms what the small optimistic part of my body knows: that it will work out. Always. Even if the time crawls instead of flies.

I mean, I have to be realistic. What I want will take time to come. I’m relentlessly picky. I could be tasked with repopulating the earth and would refuse if I didn’t feel it would work (besides the fact that I don’t want children). I’m inviting you into myself. Energy matters.

I suppose this is why I’m unsuccessful on Hinge. I sound rather insane.

Yet, it still hurts when people make throw-away comments about not expecting me to ever get married or not seeing me in a relationship. Let’s pray I make it to that moment, my mother often jokes. ‘Cause it seems so far off.

I can’t throw that away. I collect it long after everyone has left and keep it deep inside my chest.

Devotion is all I know, which is detrimental and a part of me I’ll never get rid of. However, I’m disillusioned with the idea of obsession. For a while, the lines were blurred but I’ve realized I needed my partner to exist outside of who we were together.

I’m hyperindependent and don’t want to lose the ability to be myself so that baseless need is too much. It’s like I’m a fifty-foot woman in a jungle of my own making, making room for something to grow beside me, not over me.

So, the performance of it all helps keep me on the path. I see the quiet fidelity, the easy comfort that comes with being chosen without a second thought. I see the build and the fruits of labor.

pinterest.

lewis ronald.

When my friends send me videos of dates or gestures of love with the words ‘this made me think of you’ or ‘you would love this’, I feel reassured. This means I’m insecure and that’s alright. It doesn’t ruin me, not largely.

My friend Freyja¹ does this all the time. She’s relentless, always sending me a slice of pop culture and claiming that this will be my life.

‘I could totally see you with…” is her constant beginning and I have to resist the urge to crush her in a hug.

Freyja is one of those people who’s naturally vibrant. We intersect each other: Ralph Lauren sweaters, vanilla scent obsession, hardworking, independent—and then we diverge: honey-blonde vs jet black, Boston vs. London, etc.

We’ve gotten closer as we’ve gotten older and our friendship is low maintenance. There’s nothing I love more than languishing in the early morning, legs crossed in the kitchen of my flat as I listen to her endless voice memos.

With her, I know I have time and that I can take it. In terms of who I care about, who really knows me, she’s made it to the small circle at the top.

She’s so fun and brilliant without trying and in retrospect, I wonder if she knows how many times she’s saved my life, my belief in myself, by telling me about all the ways she sees me in love.

So yes, the displays of perfect coupledom can feel flat and devoid of authenticity, but I think you have to change the way you view it to see what they could’ve intended.

I see it all as memorabilia, soft nudges that tell me the world isn’t going to shit and when it is it doesn’t touch everything. I hear it as a low whisper when I watch the news and begin to break out from the stress. This is not a reflection of the world, it says.

Destruction can feel constant, but it has never been on its own. It too has a partner, with which it forms a cycle. Something will always seed in the razed earth and sprout.

You see it again and again. The break-up is public and with that comes scalding embarrassment, second-hand or first. But the love is public too, the happiness. You were loved and you can be loved and you will be loved. We’ve all seen it. Some of us save it to our TikTok favorites, our Instagram folder, our Pinterest board.

I’m not sure what I’m arguing against or for.

Maybe loin des yeux, loin du coeur. That’s just the way life is.

I can feel it coming back to me slowly — @starlightmonitor on tumblr.

the crown ain’t worth much by hanif abdurraqib.

1. names changed for privacy.