99 Love Balloons
“Hey, how are you?” is meant to be answered with “Good thanks, and you?” It’s part of the social contract. A polite acknowledgement that both parties have their own series of events unfolding and both will suspend whatever demons lurk below momentarily.
It is the hand shake of conversation. And much like actual hand shaking it has been made irrelevant by 2020.
I’ve had many chats about how I’m holding up. Commiserated over the lengthly process of sanitizing groceries. Debated the finer points of mask usage. The subtext being, “I LOVE YOU. DON’T DIE.”
We can’t shout that at each other all day. Zoom meetings are already an exhausting performance filled with people trying to wrangle lighting and face angles with overworked wifi. We try not to judge bad hair all the while more interested in the backgrounds of their rooms.
“Are you wearing pants?” Ha ha ha. They chuckle at their own originality. Some people aren’t. Even when they’re on Good Morning America. And that’s fine.
I LOVE YOU. PLEASE DON’T DIE.
I scream this internally while putting off texting my friends for yet another day. I talk to twitter more than the people I love most. I do more over Instagram than with my own friends. It’s always been this way, even before the excuse of a global lockdown. We tell ourselves that after this is all over we’re going to hug everyone and see all our friends. We won’t, but it’s a nice thought.
Humans are not confined by the communities they were born into anymore. The people I love scatter across the globe like colourful balloons, strings tethered to my heart. Bright yellow sunshine strings lead me to Spain. Metallic grey is off in China. They float around with the winds of life and from time to time pink and purple and red will have a party.
If I screamed, “I LOVE YOU! DON’T DIE!” they might pop. Instead I tug gently on their strings. “Stay safe” it whispers.
It’s been too long for some of these conversations. I should have texted long ago. “Hey, how are you?” across five time zones is not nearly enough. “Good thanks, and you?” part of an old habit.
“Have you seen Fleabag yet?” I picture him with curly hair still though I know it was shaven off long ago. “Not the TV series, but I saw the stage version.” We don’t do emojis, we’re beyond emojis.
“I’ve been reading a lot.” I haven’t really, but I tell him of the words fictional people are saying to each other instead of my own. “Have you heard the new album she put out?” he replies. Of course I have, but I let him tell me about it anyway. We trade pop culture the way others give hugs. The grey balloon string taps out a morse code “I. love. you. Don’t. die.”
Greetings were once an afterthought. A part of a life pattern. “How are you?” now trembles with more sincerity than the phrase can bear. Gone are the accidental run ins at the market, and the post work coffee catch ups. Conversation is no longer perfunctory. We are all acutely aware of who is and who is not wearing pants.
“What’s for dinner?” is code for are you being fed. “What are you up to?” is asking if you’re happy. And “everything okay?” is an invitation to not be okay together.
We don’t say goodbye anymore we say, “Stay safe" when we really want to scream I LOVE YOU.
