“Agora Hills.”
If my admittedly terrible long-term memory is correct, I’ve had three main romantic relationships. This doesn’t count anything before fifteen-years-old—i.e., the boys who used to walk me from class to class in middle school until, after a week or two, I’d announce the relationship had run its course, or the boy who I was told by all the White girls in fifth grade was perfect for me because we were two of only a handful of Black kids at our private school. Let’s say it also doesn’t count anything that lasted for a month or two, that was over before it became a “thing.” In my maybe revisionist history, I’ve had a boyfriend in high school, one in college, and I have one now. After the one in college, I had a number of unofficial relationships that were serious to varying to degrees but pretty much all taught me something and—together—slowly coaxed me into looking for something official again.
In the interim between my college relationship and the one I’m in now, I was—if you ask my friends—pretty afraid of commitment. As someone maybe at times toxically monogamous, it’s not that I didn’t want to be in a relationship, but that I’d learned that you could dip so deeply into one that you forget how to be an individual. And I know that individualism is perhaps in part a value ingrained in us to prop up capitalism, to keep us from thinking about how other people are doing and instead working working working so that we ourselves can make it, but I do think—despite this—that it’s important to remember who you are. To have friends still, even after you fall in love, that you keep up with, and to pursue your own interests. To not be so relieved as to have found someone that you sacrifice the rest of your life to the altar of your relationship.
I’ve always been—even in my pre-teen crushes—someone who dove in deep when I really liked someone. I once, in sixth grade, cried as I decided that it was time to let go of a crush on this boy who, most likely, because I was nerdy and also Black in a very White school, had never really thought of me that way. As I got older (let’s blame it on being a Scorpio), I didn’t get much more relaxed about dating. I went all in, and I went all in, until one day I blinked and realized that as a woman, it does not take much for your sense of self to be yanked from under your feet.
Before my current relationship, I was terrified of being submerged, of liking someone (loving them?!) so much that you can’t really see yourself anymore. I became somewhat of a cool girl in the sense that I did not require commitment to show up every day and talk to someone and take care of them. When they warned that they were emotionally scarred and could not commit to me, I shrugged and said, “It’s cool.” I said, “We have a lot of time,” when in fact, it had already been a lot of time and I was beginning to wonder where this train was headed. That or people—well-intended—would be into me quickly, which made me much more skeptical than the people who could not commit. Why are you into me? I wanted to know, and by it, do you mean I’m going to wake up one day twenty years from now and wonder where my life has gone? I stuck to people who let me bide my time, get used to the water, but then inevitably I’d get restless when the time stretched and stretched without anything changing. I’d eventually look at my watch, move on.
I’d gotten so used to being chill, being down for whatever for longer than I should be, that when I first started dating my boyfriend, he asked me what I was looking for and I rambled something vague and chill about being down for whatever until he was like, “Yeah okay, that’s cool, but I guess I’m looking for a girlfriend,” to which I backed up as quickly as humanly possible, and said, “I’m looking for that too,” and he said, “You’re looking for a girlfriend?” and I said something about being bi and therefore a boyfriend would do.
Being with him, I have slowly realized that it is in fact not uncool to be openly in love with someone. It is not uncool to be happy and to not be sly about this happiness or in denial or unable—without persistent questioning—to admit it. It is vulnerable but in fact very cool to like someone a lot (love them?!) and to realize how incredibly fortuitous it is for them to like (love!!) you back. You do not know the future, sure, and you might end up sad, of course, but I think it is still a cool thing to hope for and build toward a future that contains more of the good time that you are currently having and to celebrate (maybe not, like, constantly on social media but you get the gist) that in this present moment you are feeling something good.
And I know Doja Cat can be kind of unpredictable and therefore a hesitant choice to rave about, but I do really love “Agora Hills.” I was trying to decide what I would write about this week when I realized that I was in fact playing this song for the umpteenth time in a row. And what I love about it especially is that it is not a sappy love song—it is not performative or overly valiant in its declaration of love. But it’s not hesitant either—it says, pretty plainly, I really like you, and “I want to show you off.”
I think, in a lot of ways, I feel that. I don’t want to be someone who pretends to be cool so that I don’t get hurt. I don’t want to move too quickly, to be overly exuberant in my feelings, but I do want to feel things. I do want to be someone who, when I’m in love, can say it without rolling my eyes, without denying it. Because considering all of the utter chaos in our world, all of the distractions and all of the busyness, isn’t it kind of a miracle to really earnestly like anything, much less a person, living and breathing and trying to figure it out like you?
Image: Doja Cat
