I wrote something back in June. I lost it recently. It was about the pandemic and it felt important, so I’m going to try to recreate it here.

It was a Thursday and one theatre student had managed to put together a performance a couple days before everyone had to return home. We were told Tuesday night and we had to leave Saturday afternoon. In between packing and school and saying goodbye to friends and life happening, there was this theatre performance. A goodbye for the performances that wouldn’t be finished now that we had to leave. I went with two friends, not excited about how much it felt like a goodbye. I remember sitting in those slightly uncomfortable auditorium seats and listening to a song of a musical that was never finished. I sat there and listened to “In the Beginning” about an apocalyptic world in which going above ground was the ultimate rebellion. It felt so familiar, even though I had never heard the song before. This group of performers, some seniors, would never be reunited in the same way again. I listened to this song and never felt so strongly that this was the end. It felt poetic, listening to that song. It felt like someone had hit the pause button. On the musical, on my life, on the world. Someone hit the pause button and I didn’t know when they would decide to hit play again. I wasn’t sure if they would ever decide to hit play again. Maybe they would keep it on pause and press fast forward so that each frame slid past achingly slow for much too long.

Back in June, when I originally wrote this, when I originally remembered this moment, I wondered when things would be back to normal again. Back in June, people said maybe by the summer, or by October, maybe then life can resume. For a lot of people it did. For a lot of people they went back to work, back to school, back to seeing friends and coworkers. For me, and most of my classmates, we got used to online schooling. It seemed like a reasonable alternative, but it didn’t feel so reasonable. My life had just begun at college. I felt like I was learning who I was for the first time, and back home with online college all I learned was how to hide that beginning person away. So when I remember back to that moment, to that feeling of the whole world being on pause, I remember too my actions afterward. Because I wasn’t one of the people that left on that Saturday. Instead, I applied to stay on campus. Yes, out of fear of what the pandemic was like back home, but also because I wanted so strongly to keep that feeling of home for as long as I could. None of my close friends stayed on campus, only about 60 people did. For the one week I stayed there, it felt like I was a ghost. Seeing another person around campus felt like a surprise each time. So after a week, I decided I had enough and came home. I knew it wasn’t so much the campus that made me feel home, but the people on it. But because of my desperation to grip onto anything that made me happy, I forgot that.

I returned home and I lost most of the fulfillment I got out of taking classes. I lost the fulfillment of seeing friends and being crazy and nonchalant about the next challenge. Right now I’m finishing my first fully online semester, and I feel like I’m just starting to remember that college can be fun. We’re supposed to be going back to campus in the spring and I’m worried that when I go back to campus I won’t ever have that same feeling again, of being young and crazy and unbothered. And that really really sucks.

I went to a seminar called the Human Connection Initiative and there we were told about a bullseye circle that encompassed us. In the middle was all of us, the vulnerable fundamentals of who we are. Some people we let into that circle, and some we kept out. Outside that smaller circle was a little larger one that encompassed our friends, the people we hung out with a lot, but who we weren’t fully vulnerable with. Outside the friend’s circle were our acquaintances, the people we saw every so often, and only really had surface-level conversations with.

But recently I’ve come to the conclusion that the part of all of us we share with the world is in fact a circle, but not a bullseye. Instead, it is a single homemade cake. And every piece of me I decide to cut is how much of me I share with the world. I could choose to cut even small pieces, sharing personal stories and opinions like breadcrumbs. Or I could start out cutting even small pieces, giving those to my acquaintances, the people I don’t know as well, saving the larger pieces for my family members, my friends, because I know them after all, they can handle a bigger slice. Or I could just start cutting reasonable pieces, pieces of myself that I know will be enough to satisfy. I could hand over slices that people don’t expect, a vulnerability that seems unnatural and prone to hurt. This type of cake sharing is one I’ve only seen and never experienced because I imagine after a few people have left half-eaten slices on their plates it’s much harder to handle the knife again.

I am the middle scenario. The type of person who starts off giving small even pieces, but when encountered with a person I know well, has let my knife slip, until I have given away a bigger piece than I ever really expected. I think most people are this way most of the time. Sometimes we revert back to small even pieces, but it’s much harder to maintain. And sometimes, at dangerously happy points in our lives, we share huge pieces, willing those who won’t finish our slices to leave, at least we know some who will.

But the problem with this metaphor comes because vulnerability, the all-encompassing us, is not limited like a single homemade cake. Instead, this single homemade cake is magical in that for every cake slice you give away, a new one comes to replace it. And when your magical cake slice has not replenished, you hope that you get one back from someone else, a different flavor than yours, but equally valuable. A weird kind of potluck. Your cake slices left don’t quite fit around the new ones you’ve gained, but most of the time it doesn’t matter. The cake slices are usually similar enough in size that they can fit next to each other perfectly well.

Other problems come when the one you give away is bigger than the one you get back, but that’s just part of life sometimes. Sometimes the people you give small even slices to give you a bigger piece in return that you are not ready for, but cake is cake, and all cake is delicious. So don’t feel bad if your cake is giving out small even slices for a long time. Sometimes that happens, and sometimes it takes getting a slightly bigger slice for your knife to slip and reveal the bigger piece you knew you wanted to give.

Sometimes I wonder how other asexuals feel about attraction. If it's possible to live in this world without being asked smash or pass on random strangers (when that was still popular). If it's possible to live without being asked if you find random stranger xyz cute, or hot, or attractive. If other asexuals are also are confused about what to reply. At least until you find ways to make sense of people's looks.

"He has a nice jawline."

"She's got a great body."

"I prefer guys that are cute, not handsome."

Until you can judge people based on how they look and determine if you could possibly consider dating them. I've been taught that instead of learning about the person, first think about sex. First consider if you feel the blasted "spark." A spark that means something more than being easy to talk to and laugh with. A spark that you can't confuse with friendship, no matter how hard you try.

Maybe I'm naive, but that's what I've learned. That most people don't know the word "asexual" or understand that there's a difference between being open to sex and being sexually attracted to other people. Unless, perhaps, they've searched for it before. Just to be sure, just to be completely sure, that it does not apply to them.

I wish there was a way to instantly record thoughts and memories. A way to preserve them so I could hold onto them in a notebook or a computer. But notebook pages can get soaked until you can't read the letters and computers can get soaked until you can't turn them on. Then you are left with soaked pages and empty metal and still, nothing is preserved. People can live every day of their lives an angel and still end up with their bodies rotting in the ground. I know nothing lasts forever, I do, but why can't I stop myself from wanting it to? There are no guarantees that after I'm gone people will remember to care. There are no guarantees that the life I remember living is the life I led. There are no guarantees that my little cog will do anything but turn furtively forever. I hope not, but that's all there is. Wishes, hopes, and dreams for a world in which I can hold onto everything. A world that will never be real. A world I wish I could expect.