🍰✨

I love the kitsch of Valentine’s Day. It is the most aesthetically pleasing holiday to me. I celebrate it, no matter what, even if simply through rituals of self-love.

At a virtual support group that I went to on Thursday, the topic was “starting a new relationship,” which was unfortunate, since the thought of starting a new relationship is not at all in the realm of what I want to do. After some discussion, the group concluded that dating apps were bad. 

I was on dating apps earlier in this pandemic, and I thought that I might find a penpal for some transatlantic sexting, when it became clear to me that dating right now is painful. I haven’t felt physical attraction to anyone in a year. I almost mistrust physical beauty now, with its all-too-easy manipulations. Instead, I have been living a life of the mind, seeking one-sided sensual pleasures through cerebral pathways. I am becoming infatuated with pastry chefs on YouTube and perfume reviewers and philosophy professors whose work I have ringing in my eyes and ears. By extension of their beautiful words and creations and voice and sensibilities, they too are beautiful. I am so voracious and upset that I cannot consume them wholly and that their entire body of work isn’t, in fact, a love note tucked strategically somewhere on the internet for me to find. But then there is a moment in which I detect traces of sameness or sadness or desperation in every video and review and post and article and interview that I consume of theirs. The obvious occurs to me: In attempting to side-step the algorithm and satiate my touch-hungry mind, I have had a hand this whole time in my own influencing. The fractal flattens. The thrill is gone.

Dating apps are bad in the same way that TikTok is bad in the same way that Instagram and think-pieces in the NYT are bad. We have so much to say, so much further down the spiral to descend. Our bodies are drowning while our brains and their capacity to create new problems every day with nothing new to say about them are in fact life preservers. I have felt like a brain in a jar for years, neglecting my needs, angry at myself for having needs and feelings. Angry at myself for being sensitive. Angry at myself for not being able to just feel good, dammit. This summer, it felt like there was a comments section screaming in my head all the time, and so I pulled the plug on my Instagram and Twitter to end the misery, as though I were taking myself off of life support. Feelings continued to come up, and I soothed my guilt.

In Energy Healing: The Essentials of Self-Care, Ann Marie Chiasson, MD, writes, “In our culture, many of us carry the bulk of our energy in our heads, not in our bodies. On the physical level, keeping most of our energy centered upward, in the upper energy centers, can lead to an imbalance of the automatic nervous system, producing anxiety and an overreactive sympathetic nervous system. For the most part, this upward shift has occurred over the past two hundred to five hundred years. Our culture revers the mind, and as a whole, we have our energy focused higher in the body.”

The most sensation I feel in my body on most days is all in my head. Right now, I feel a slight pressure in my forehead and between my brows. Not a headache or migraine, but as though I am continually adjusting to the altitude.

I’m trying to shift the sensation out from between my ears. I’m starting by practicing yoga and listening to my body. I hold the root and sacral chakras as I meditate. I am trying to accept living in the gray space, without being so reductive with labels. I am trying to let go of checklists. I would love to feel a physical pull toward someone again someday, but until then, I want to rebuild trust with my own body.