On Love & Loss in A Global Pandemic

My boyfriend and I met when I was born. Literally. That is not an exaggeration. His dad knew my dad for years and our families were friends while we were growing up. He is eight years older than me. There are photos of us circulating from childhood. It’s cute now but would’ve been weird then. This information is all beside the point, but part of the point, nonetheless.

When COVID began in March here in the States, I was teaching fitness full-time in New York City. The city became apocalyptic, with Whole Foods being scoured by the moms and wives of the Upper East Side and subways becoming less and less filled with patrons. Germ-X was in high demand and mask-wearing was still a futuristic theory. Bars and restaurants moved to 50% capacity the weekend before St. Patty’s Day, a death-sentence for businesses in New York. People were panicking, and thousands of New Yorkers were fleeing the city. Nothing in my life had looked more like ’the end’ to me than this.

I taught a class the morning of March 16, then took a flight home to Iowa to be with my parents. No one was staying in New York City, so this seemed reasonable. Gyms closed the following day, so I guess my timing couldn’t have been better. This meant I was out of work, going back to my childhood home for what I thought might be a two-week stint, and the future seemed more unpredictable than I had ever imagined.

Bet you can guess: it was not two weeks.

It was four months.

In that four month time period, a lot of things happened… like how I drank a bottle of wine every night for the first 35 days I was home (this sometimes still happens... okay… this does still happen). Or how I ended up chopping ten inches off my hair. Or how I was furloughed from both of my jobs. Oh, then I had to move out of my New York City apartment abruptly. Then I got a business idea for a company devoted to helping women embrace who they are. Or how about when I started writing a memoir about my 12+ years in pageantry? I pissed a lot of people off when I finally wrote about my experience in pageantry. So I thought I should do more of that. I decided to run a marathon. I gained weight and lost weight and gained it again and then thought, “I never want to spend a day not eating Kerrygold butter.” So the weight stayed. Oh, I got a dog. With my boyfriend. That I got in quarantine. Then, I moved in with said boyfriend. This was before the dog. Oh, yes, I am so glad you asked. I moved into his 650 square foot studio apartment in Saint Louis, Missouri. THEN we got said puppy and this thing pissed and shit all over this one rug we had, so we delivered it to a dumpster on a scorching hot summer day. I still think about that rug. Then we both thought we had COVID-19 about 24 different times and had the mummification process performed on us via COVID testing. We both have been beyond blessed with our health and the health of our loved ones this year (and we recognize the magnitude of that statement, as we know not everyone has had the same fortune). Oh, then I got a new job working for a company that still does their work in-person. So I wear a mask to work everyday. Which is weird, and makes me have a lot of respect for my dental hygienist mother who has been doing that for 45 years. Then I found out I wanted to spend my life with said partner that I got while the world was on fire.

A lot can happen in four months. Things can change drastically. Things will change drastically. And these changes will force you to lose. They always do; change always does. One thing I try to consciously keep in mind — especially in this season of life — is that to love is to lose. You can’t get one without the other. So when I opted for a new life with my partner, I opted out of my old life in New York. This was the hardest loss of all, because with most losses (read: most loves), you can somewhat predict the loss, analytically speaking. For example, I know that someday my dog will die. I know that someday I will lose the ones I love. I know that someday my days of having children will be over. I know that with every change, every transition, there will be an equal and opposite reaction, and that reaction is typically grief. Think of it as the physics of emotion. This year, most losses were unpredictable, which is what make them that much more challenging. To love is to lose but to lose unexpectedly is, in my humble opinion, a harder loss than one of predictability. I do not say this from a pessimistic standpoint. I say this from a standpoint of perpetual optimism.

Nothing lasts, so enjoy it while you can.

Nothing is permanent, so keep going.

Nothing stays the same, so be able to ride the wave.

More than ever, flexibility is what 2020 has taught me. Be flexible enough to not only move with what the world throws at you, but to have some semblance of sanity whilst moving with it. And it taught me to miss.

Because that’s what 2020 has given us the opportunity to do the most — miss. To miss the smiles from strangers on the street. To miss scouring at others when they piss you off with their frivolous happiness, especially if they’re happy in the winter, because no one is fucking happy in the winter. To miss the warm and snuggly embrace of your father. To miss the gentle kiss on the cheek from your mom. To miss the kind embrace from an older brother who cares and an older sister who empathizes. To miss absolutely-holy-fucking-shit-jam-goddamned-packed subway rides. To miss the harmless flirtation with other humans on those subway rides. To miss the “ope, pardon me,” at the coffee shop when you’re planning to “just sneak right past” the gal to your left, the truest spoken word of Midwestern delights. To miss the general, seemingly unimportant, yet exceptional delicacies of what it means to be a living, breathing human being on planet Earth. This is what is means to be in 2020. You either miss, or you weren’t alive prior to 2020. We all are missing, we’re all losing. And only each of us knows what we’re missing and losing. And you dictate the hierarchy of your misses and losses.

When I say miss, I, of course, mean the true explanation of what it is to miss... and that is to grieve. To love is to lose and to miss is to grieve. We’re grieving the loss of human connection and connectivity to those we love, while some of us are simultaneously falling in love in our own tiny little corners of the Earth. We’re loving, losing, missing, grieving — all at once. Our psyches will take time to recover when we return to an optimal level of safety (read: when we’re all not in a clusterfuck of fight or flight). When that happens, perhaps we can stay in a state of love for just a little longer. Perhaps we won’t have to move onto missing or losing or grieving right away.

Either way, I’m going to pull one out of the gospel of Brené Brown and say this: the price of love is high, but the reward is great... global pandemic or not.