Love Stories is a series about love in all its forms, with one new essay appearing each day until Valentine’s Day.
In middle school, I would stay awake to the point of delirium and scrawl my sorrows, emotional thoughts, and wishes into my journal. Around that time, I was starting to notice changes: growing older, impermanence, wishing for innocence, and coping with that. I felt desperate pangs about documenting everything, so as to hold onto it. The only way I could cope with beautiful things and passing time was to immortalize—and monumentalize—them, by making something bigger. That s how I started journaling.
The photos here were taken on trips I took with my boyfriend, Kyle, from April through October 2019, starting in Paris, then Pennsylvania in June, Mexico in July, and Portugal and Austria in August. There are snapshots from New York throughout. My journals comprise doodles of things I saw or lists of what we’d order at restaurants, tangents I d go on after seeing artists’ names in magazines. I realized that even in my leisure time I need something to do, so I bought a set of colored pencils and incessantly traced empty Sudoku puzzles in different colors and solved them, making these neurotic grids.
We re long distance, which feels like a recurring Shakespearean tragedy. We re crafty with ways we can see each other, whether it s on work trips or jumping off from a family vacation. But in the interim it spawns meaningful creations for us both. When we met, it wasn’t convenient for anyone, but there was no other way of moving forward except for accepting it. I hadn t had a true relationship before I met him, so it feels like a gift, even to have found him. We communicate through letters and even handwritten PDFs. Texting sucks, but we send each other lots of pictures throughout the day, which is better and more fun. Some days we only communicate through pictures and single word messages.
Some of my old journals are included in this, and the progression I ve experienced since then tells me a lot. In contrast, the photos say, I m an adult now! But I wasn’t one very recently, and I feel like I now see my voice. Love helped.
