Ghosts of relationships past

Relationships are hard. Whether they’re family, friends or romantic partners, all relationships can get complicated and messy. This year, a worldwide pandemic and a quarantine forced us into our homes, and locked us with some of our closest connections. For a lot of us, it was with our families; for some others, perhaps roommates or friends; some others got locked with the most complex and exciting of companies: themselves.

If this confinement has done anything, besides making us learn the pros and cons of home office, is put our relationships to the test. Numerous lawyers have stated that divorce rates could spike after the pandemic ends. With couples stuck at home, forced to interact and relate to each other in new and possibly undiscovered ways, issues that were easily avoidable may come to light in the most unexpected of ways.

With the announcement that ordinary classes won’t come back until next year, working mothers everywhere are now facing a new reality, where they have to juggle their day-to-day chores with the additional responsibility of caring for their home-schooled children. Roommates, who pre-pandemic perhaps only saw each other at mornings, nights and weekends, now struggle with the challenge of sharing the same Wi-Fi connection for their daily Zoom meetings. And let’s not even talk about couples who found themselves living together during quarantine almost by accident.

Bottom line here is relationships are facing yet another challenge. As if they weren’t hard enough already. And in a world where only the strongest survive, the same motto could be applied to relationships. The corpses of romance will most likely fill the streets in the upcoming months. Next year, when the vaccine is made available and our new normality finally kicks in, we might find a lot more single people than before.

That got me thinking about the nature of relationships. Some say a relationship is like a plant: it needs constant caring and supervision, love and attention, water, earth and sunlight. But plants are tricky, complicated. Too much water and the plant dies. Too much sun and it dries. If you don’t trim it often, it grows and becomes something you did not initially expect. Just like plants, a delicate balance is needed if your relationship is to endure.

But with something as tricky as human interactions, there is no guidebook, no manual to tell you when you’re giving too much love or too much care. Is there even such a thing? When I think about all the relationships in my past, friends and lovers that I simply don’t have in my life anymore, I feel a little bit empty. What happened to all those connections, all those shared dreams?

Friends who you thought of as brothers, with whom you shared moments of pure joy and freedom, turn into memories, then ghosts who don’t even bother to WhatsApp you on your birthday. Lovers for whom you could’ve swore you’d die for at any given moment, and who now are nothing but distant memories in a crowded cemetery.

Does time truly make no friends? Is love really that short and oblivion truly that long?

What happened to all those feelings, all those smiles and pouts shared? Are they just stones along our road, checking points in the way to our ultimate destination, whatever that is?

Are we the relationships of our past, or just the memories they leave us with?

I think it’s the former. When I look back into all the relationships I’ve had, friends, acquaintances, lovers or even one-nights stands, I know they all happened for a reason. Our lives intertwine with so many others during our stay on this Earth, it’s impossible to know just how many are truly touched by our mere existence. Every single interaction we have ever had with another human being counts for something. In a way, our lives are not really our own. In a way, we are the sum of our connections.

So yes, we might leave friends behind, and yes, love can turn into indifference. But the moments remain. Life is made of those moments. They can be as short as two gazes crossing in a crowded subway cart, or the accidental touch of hands on a bannister. They can be a kind smile on a particularly blue afternoon, or a stolen kiss at a college party. Some moments last seconds, while others spread through days, which can then become years.

But the thing about moments is that they always end and it’s up to us to decide how we keep them alive. Melancholy is not the enemy when you learn to appreciate it for what it is. Those who you lose along the way have their own path to take; perhaps both paths will intertwine again, or perhaps they’re destined to remain parallel. But for a moment, even a brief one, you had a bond. A spark. And all it takes to spark a fire, is one simple spark.