That photo is probably the most valuable document of our relationship. Because everything we promised each other that night died eight weeks later. We didn't break up because we stopped loving each other. We broke up because March 2020 transformed "my girlfriend" into something unrecognizable.
My Girlfriend, 2019: A Love Story Before the World Changed my girlfriend 2019
If you are out there, 2019 girlfriend: I’m sorry I didn't know how to hold onto us when gravity shifted. I'm sorry I thought love was just being in the same room, not navigating a fractured world. I miss the arguments. I miss the IKEA trip. I miss the girl who thought the biggest problem in 2020 would be choosing a cat name. That photo is probably the most valuable document
You want to remember what it felt like to hold a girlfriend’s hand without hand sanitizer. To share a drink without a barrier of anxiety. To argue about pillows, not variants. To have a future that didn’t require a risk assessment. We broke up because March 2020 transformed "my
We argued about things that feel painfully trivial now: leaving the toilet seat up, why she watched The Bachelor ironically (she didn't), and whether we should adopt a cat. We didn't know we were rehearing the last act of a play called Normalcy. In 2019, our biggest fight happened at an IKEA. She wanted a yellow throw pillow. I wanted a gray one. We stood in the marketplace section, two adults on the verge of tears, because the pillow represented something larger: my fear of commitment, her fear of being controlled. A classic.