I write a lot in my notes app, as we all do, to process my emotions and make sense of my experiences. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my relationship to dating and dating apps, and how often I (and the people around me) jump from person to person in an almost disposable way. On the one hand, it’s good to maintain an abundance mindset about dating, to recognize that there’s always another door to be opened and a new person to be met. But on the other hand, I’ve found this revolving door perspective renders dating to a conveyer belt. The problem with a conveyer belt is it never stops moving. There’s never time to stop, to think, and to feel. A conveyer belt lacks intentionality. Here’s something from my notes app where I begin to make this realization about my relationship to dating.
Sometimes I feel like I’m playing a computer game from the late 2000s. I queue up my screen snake and watch him make his way in the confines of my screen, furrowing my brows with focus and tapping my keys with a rhythm akin to the songs I once knew on piano by heart. Inevitably, after a minute or at best 3, my screen snake dies, and I queue up his new life. With every new boy I queue up, I imagine his life will be long, new levels unlocked. I tap the keys with immense focus, minimizing the other windows of my life to zero-in on saving my screen snake from his imminent death. Not all snakes are meant to survive. Few will — but it’s the hope that keeps us reloading a new life. Just one more game, I promise, maybe this one will stick. Maybe I’ll hit a new record.
It feels good to keep playing my computer game, to ride the highs and lows of hope then disappointment, to know that there’s another game I can queue up next. I’m comfortable here. But I feel myself becoming too accustomed to disposability. What would happen if I closed the game, called it quits? I’m too scared to stop playing, because it’s so familiar to watch my snake make its way around the corners of my screen, to light up with anticipation each time a new game loads. None of this is a game, this desire for connection. Because people are far more complicated than the screen snake that’s burned into my memory, far more complicated than getting the A or even the promotion. I can’t gamify love. There’s too many variables at play, too much beyond my control. I spin in circles intellectualizing my experiences, moving from one to the next, without leaving space for feeling. It’s sad when my screen snake dies. I was rooting for him. But there will be another one, soon. I know it.
I love this