To Miss Him Like Friday

model: yujin nam

yes, the rumors are true - i’m a lovergirl that wallows in her favorite memories like pigs in mud. it looks a little like this: noah kahan serenading your eardrums as you’re yearning for something that no longer is. remnants of a feeling that filled every crack and crevice of your orbit and leaked into the dark matter in between. it’s absolutely heart-wrenching in the best way, isn’t it? to absorb expired love like a dish sponge, to soak in the stale and lukewarm waters of a once so tangible and electric sensation. a fading current now glitching and creeping between the folds of your brain.

last year i unexpectedly crossed paths with someone who scratched my brain in just the right way. a connection that filled me with so much peace and ambition it’s still sowing specks in the present. the average person will interact with around 80000 people throughout their lifetime. of which only 600 will be known by name, less than 50 will result in deeper and meaningful connections. many of these connections will be fleeting in time, intertwining of souls only temporary and short-lived. the important thing to realise is that interim doesn’t equal meaningless. meeting this person is probably one of my favorite memories of the entire last year. and it made me think: is the love of something temporary worth the ache and grief you know you will experience later on? has our generation over-romanticised casual romance?

breaking my head about this on a plane to bangkok, i came to two profound conclusions.

first. yes, my generation has commitment issues. this applies to relationships (whether those are romantic or platonic) the same way it applies to career pathways or even life dreams. we tend to kick our picks to the curb as soon as they no longer give us the satisfaction that we initially hoped for.

second. there is a difference between casual and temporary romance. while casual romance is entertained in detachment, self-protection, temporary romance is lived fully in the present, openly felt, housing a mind receptive of expiration. sounds like the same thing? trust me, it’s not.

so should we even entertain romantic connection that we are aware from the get-go will not last?

take me for an example - the fleeting connection i had with this human gave me (as well as them, i suppose) a variety of things. it offered me a sense of comfort and companionship that i had been longing for living abroad, it brought intellectual stimulus and it unlocked doors to driven parts of myself that had been locked away. would i have wanted for it to continue? yes. would it have been possible? not really. was i sad about it ending? of course! i knew it was going to end while i was still in it and was already dreading the last day we were going to see each other. (and i was also incredibly excited because we were going to see each other). i would be lying out of my back if i said i did not shed tears for this person, i genuinely missed them and the way they would yap to me over a spoon-cratered watermelon. however, all of this was worth everything that came before.

so yeah, i would say - feel a little too much, too many times. listen to silver springs by fleetwood mac as you look out of an airplane window, fuel all your love and heartache into your art and then pour it back into yourself. there are an average of 4,000 weeks in a single human lifetime. that’s a lot of mondays and fridays - live them like the weekend is all there is.