Falling In Love Under Covid-19.
By: Mara Annalitickah
Tags: Love Letters, Covid 19, Love, Pandemic, Long Distance Love

A True Story of Love.

For many people the year 2020 will be remembered as their worst year ever in their lives, for him and I, the year 2020 is the most amazing year ever in our lives.

I live in New Zealand and my boyfriend lives in the USA. We fell in love during the Covid-19 world-wide pandemic and it’s the most romantic thing ever in the history of romance but also the most torturous.

Him and I have been Face Book friends for over nine years and met on a FB live chat feed from a radio show that we both listen in to. The first time I went onto the chat I got so many friend requests as I was new to the show and had also said I was from New Zealand as the radio show is based in the USA. He sent me a friend request and when I saw it I had this feeling come over me, a feeling that something was going to happen between us. It was the most uncanny feeling and I can still remember how it felt.

So last year, I noticed that he hadn’t been on FB for months, having a slight “crush” I decided to write on his timeline and ask if everything was okay. I did this and months went by and he still wasn’t there. I even messaged a mutual friend to ask them but they we none the wiser than myself. So I waited. A few weeks after that, he was back. My heart raced as I read why he hadn’t been on FB and the reason wasn’t good, I commented on how good it was to see him back on FB and he liked my comment. My heart was racing.

A few weeks went by and I plucked up some courage and private messaged him to ask if was he interested in talking together on messenger, he said he was. Again, my heart beat so fast.

We started talking. We talked about all sorts of things and found out we had many unusual things in common regarding how we thought and how we thought about things. There was also a few uncanny elements amongst everything else. We are both politically aware and we’re very interested in politics, we are also both anarchists. We also loved a vast amount of the same music including “noisy” music. He is a musician and we would love to do something musical together as soon as we are able too. We wrote everyday, sometimes keeping in touch for the whole day.

A couple months went by and again I plucked up some courage and wrote to him “ I think it’s time we talked about our feelings towards each other,” terrified he wouldn’t ever get in touch with me again I dwelled with this message ready to send. Time spent. I pushed “send” and my heart beat fast again. Later that day or night, I can’t remember, I got a message back saying that he hopes he was understanding what I was meaning and said he had feelings for me also. I was so happy to read this. Yes, my heart beat fast again.

And so it began. I don’t want to say it happened right away but it was very close to that, I actually think we fell in love before we even knew we were, it just happened so quickly and things felt so perfect and I’m sure that’s why we didn’t even see it for a while, though looking back on those first couple of months writing you can definitely see something was happening.

From then on our letters became the most lovely letters too and fro. The love poured out across the pages of our nightly emails to each other. Never in our lives had we ever experienced love like this or romance ever and every letter just got more and more romantic and we began falling into this deep love for each other. The more we got to know each other the closer we became and the more in love we fell. These letters became the best part of our days apart, each ever excited to receive the next installment of our written love. The relaxed feeling we had with each other was a new thing thing for both of us and I felt like I was the person I always was but it took him to let me become that person. He also has become the person he was always meant to be and this cause between us shows how real our caring and love is for each other. Our love has taken on many forms within us saturating our most inner being.

During our early letter writing days we talked about the Covid–19 response in both of our countries, it was polar opposites the way each of our countries responded to the pandemic. In NZ it was handled with maturity and teamwork from the whole country, this rapid response curved the way for a near pandemic halt here. Over in the USA the response was a confusing swill of stagnant nonsense that saw the country fall into a state of confusion, frustration, anger and division. I was scared for him and I still am as the pandemic is still out of control there and there is no government help or guidance for the people who cannot seem to take it under themselves to protect each other, the hate for each other there is alarming and sad. Our country was brought together with our pandemic response and the USA’s response has only brought a dividing line so it continues to spread and the death toll climbs higher each day and the complacency of the elected officials is even more sickening than the virus.

Another couple more months went by and we talked about having a phone date. So we agreed that I would phone him the following weekend, his Saturday, my Sunday. As that day drew nearer I got more and more nervous, the thought of phoning him put me in a place I’d never been before and I was not myself. The morning of the phone date arrived and I waited for the note to say he was ready for me to call him. The note arrived at around 11am, shaking, it took me around two hours to pluck up enough courage to push the “call” button on my phone. It rang and he answered. My was heart beating the fastest it’s ever beat in my whole life and then he spoke to me and my heart melted.

The more we spoke the more we fell in love the more we wanted to be together and to feel each other’s touch. Our physical longing was and still is a torturous take. Stimulated by our letters and phone dates we long to be together in real life so much, we talk about this often and we are there for each other amongst the tears and heartache this brings from being apart. The borders here are closed so he can’t come here yet. I’m going to go there as soon as I’m able. You may say it’s insane of me to go to a country where this pandemic may not be under any sort of control and I hear you, what I say back is that our love is so strong and I cannot help myself but to go to him. We have a safety plan in place for when I get there. From there we’ll decide what to do and where to spend the rest of our lives together.

Through the pandemic we commented on how the world was having such a terrible time under the spread and threat of Covid-19, we laughed that we were having such a wonderful time and that falling in love with each other under a world-wide pandemic was really a true story of love.

As a parting end to this true story of love, I’d like to share one of the most amazing things that has happened to us, other than both of us falling madly in love with each other, this has to do with sleep. Before him and I fell in love or even started writing to each other, we both slept badly. I used to have to listen to audiobooks to help me fall asleep and I would wake four to five times during the night and then wake in the morning feeling terrible everyday from a broken sleep. He would lay in his bed trying to go to sleep as well and listen to audiobooks to help him also and when he’d finally go to sleep he would wake through the night as well. As I said I can’t remember if it was before or after we fell in love that we both started sleeping really well, it is the most incredible thing, both of us have no trouble falling asleep or staying asleep now. We both go to sleep dreaming of each other and waking with each other in our thoughts and that is in itself a truly wonderful thing and has made our sleeping patterns near to normal. We wonder how we will sleep when we are finally laying next to each other and we are both thinking that it’ll be the most perfect sleep ever.