The Enthusiast

I had never really understood love, or at least not the way other people talked about it. I knew the mechanics of it, of course. The way it was supposed to start with an attraction, a meeting, then bloom into something deeper—a connection that transcended the banalities of everyday life. That's what everyone said. That's what books and movies insisted. But to me, love always felt like a club I wasn't allowed to join. I would watch people talking about their relationships, their breakups, their passionate highs and devastating lows, and I'd nod along as if I knew what any of it felt like.

I didn't.

My most serious relationship had been with a girl named Maya, who I met during a particularly tedious anthropology course in my second year of college. We bonded over our mutual disdain for the professor, who, in our minds, spent too much time talking about his pet theories on early human migration patterns and not enough on anything remotely interesting. We started going to a café after class, where we would sit for hours and talk about nothing at all. We weren't so much drawn to each other as we were to the idea of having someone to talk to about how much we hated our lives.

After a while, it seemed like we were together. Not because we were in love, but because it was the logical next step after weeks of talking. It felt as though dating was something we both assumed was a natural progression, like buying a microwave when you move into a new apartment. We never discussed it, but one day I was at her place, and she was making pasta, and I realized that I hadn't gone home in two days. She handed me a fork, and that was that.

Of course, it didn't last. Maya eventually decided she needed something more "passionate." That's the word she used. I think she wanted a relationship with more arguments, more fiery declarations of love, more of the push and pull that other couples seemed to thrive on. She wanted me to care more, to want her more, to feel something other than the strange comfort of cohabitation.

I couldn't give her that.

"I just don't think you're really... here," she said one night, standing in the doorway of her apartment, arms crossed as though she were cold. "It's like you're waiting for something better, but you don't even know what it is."

I didn't disagree. I had never been good at pretending to care about things I didn't care about.

After Maya, I went through a series of half-hearted attempts at dating. Apps, mostly. Swiping left and right, staring at profile pictures and wondering how people decided what to put in their bios. I'd meet someone for drinks, we'd exchange a few lines of dialogue, and by the end of the night, I'd have already forgotten what their voice sounded like.

I found it comforting, in a way, how easy it was to drift in and out of these interactions without leaving any lasting mark on the world. Each date felt like an experiment, a chance to see how little of myself I could reveal while still appearing to be an actual human being. It was amazing how far you could get on a few well-timed smiles and nods.

One night, after a particularly lackluster evening with someone whose name I couldn't remember even while we were still talking, I got a text from an old friend, Claire. She was in town and wanted to meet up. I hadn't seen her in years, but we had once been close in that way that people are when they don't know what else to do with their time.

When I got to the bar, Claire was already seated in a booth, a glass of wine in front of her. She looked almost exactly the same as she had in college, except her hair was shorter now, and she wore glasses that made her look more serious than she actually was.

"Long time," she said, smiling in that way people do when they're not sure if you'll still be the same person.

"Yeah," I said, sliding into the booth across from her. "You look... adult."

"So do you," she said, raising an eyebrow. "Kind of."

We spent the next hour talking about our lives in that perfunctory way people do when they've been apart for too long to really reconnect. She told me about her job in publishing, about how she still read my old short stories from college and thought I should go back to writing. I laughed and told her I hadn't written anything in years. She made a face, like I'd confessed to some moral failing.

"So, are you seeing anyone?" she asked, her tone casual but with the undercurrent of genuine curiosity.

"Not really," I said. "I've tried, but... I don't know. It never seems to work out."

Claire nodded, taking a sip of her wine. "Yeah, I get that. It's hard to find someone who gets it, you know?"

I didn't, but I nodded anyway.

"I don't think love is what people say it is," Claire continued, leaning back in the booth. "Like, everyone talks about it like it's supposed to be this grand thing that changes your life, but most of the time it's just... maintenance. Like keeping a plant alive."

"Or buying a microwave," I added, remembering Maya and the night she handed me that fork.

Claire laughed, the kind of laugh that made me feel like I'd just made a real point, even if I hadn't. "Exactly. You get a microwave because you need one. You don't write poems about it."

"Maybe we should," I said, mostly as a joke, but partly because it felt like the kind of thing people might actually do.

Claire smiled again, but there was something in her eyes that made me wonder if she was thinking about the same thing I was—about how life, and love, and everything in between felt like it was always just out of reach. Like we were always waiting for something to make sense, but it never did.

We left the bar a few hours later, after a few more drinks and a lot more small talk. I walked her to her car, and as she was about to get in, she turned to me and said, "You know, I always thought you'd end up with someone who understood you."

I wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but she was already closing the door, waving as she drove off into the night.

I stood there for a minute, hands in my pockets, staring after her taillights. I wondered if she was right, if there was someone out there who could understand me, and if that's what love was supposed to be.

Then I shrugged and walked home, the cold air biting at my face, and I decided it didn't really matter.

I had a microwave, after all.