You wish you could crush yourself out of this void. It’s too painful sometimes, akin to watching a train – the one you need to catch – slowly depart from the station. You chase after it, stumble on a stone, fall, manage to stand up, and resume running. The train moves slowly enough for you to jump onto it, yet you find yourself relishing the rush, the restlessness, the sweat drenching your body, and you continue running alongside the train instead of exerting the effort to board it.

You feel miserable, not because you’re all over the place, but because you feel like you’ve just missed out on a lot. This void is deeply ingrained in you, often leading you to question why you are the way you are. While you appreciate the contemporary notion of self-love, you wonder if it alone is sufficient. You question it every night, as the day ends and the hustle to achieve doesn’t make sense within the four walls of your rented house where lines of all the volitional acts seem hazy.

Love, desire, and walks… You can’t recall the last time you experienced that fluttering butterfly sensation for someone, and even rarer, when someone who reciprocated it. The memory of strolling while engrossed in conversation, listening endlessly without glancing at your mobile’s notification bar, has faded. You can’t even pinpoint when you last allowed yourself to be unguarded, revealing the vulnerable side that now only the walls of your room witness. You’ve found yourself blending into the crowd, believing you don’t fit into today’s generation, where hookup culture has become the prevalent means of fulfilling one’s desires. Yet, at the end of the day, you find yourself opening that dating app, hoping to encounter someone appealing and desirable. You voice your discontent about this contemporary culture to your friends and colleagues, your tone carrying a tinge of sadness, but could it be that you too are entwined in this very culture?

You open the app and begin swiping left and right for a while. You examine photos of people who align with your expectations, a noticeable bias emerges in your eyes, favouring conventionally attractive individuals. This bias, however, renders your profile unreachable to those who desire you. A similar dynamic holds true in reverse as well. You’re well aware that your desires often fail to receive reciprocation from those whom you desire. This cyclic pattern seems inescapable, perpetuating its own momentum. In this new dating era, mutual feelings appear almost traditional; you even find it peculiar when someone puts in the effort to perform a small gesture for you. You pretend to appreciate letters and flowers, but do you genuinely value these gestures when someone offers you with utter love and care? You find yourself mocking those who display affection, dismissing their emotions as acts of desperation.

You’re tired of the small talk on dating apps, but do you have another option? An alternative to find someone to talk to or share the same energy with, because queer culture develops on the internet, right? Unlike your friends, who fall for someone after seeing them in class or at the chai tapri, you don’t feel like you have the same privilege. Your approach to love must be cautious, ensuring that those around you remain at ease with your presence. You can’t merely spot someone and feel an instant urge to engage, owing to your identity. You love carefully, and with utmost care, you desire.

But that carefulness sometimes makes you a bit ‘picky.’ You have certain expectations from love, desire, and the concept of a date, often causing you to reject everything that comes your way. However, where do these expectations originate? You can’t simply create an ideal version of something without drawing inspiration from somewhere. This is where the role of the media comes in. Here, too, you are quite selective. Instead of watching what’s trending, you opt for films and series that you consider ‘hidden gems.’ You watch films like ‘Happy Together’ (1997), ‘Your Name Engraved Herein’ (2020) and ‘Joyland’ (2022), where queer love is portrayed as more complex, extending beyond the confines of coming out, perplexity, and society. In these narratives, queerness transcends, both within and outside. Beneath the surface, a latent yearning for a felicitous culmination resides, a depiction that encapsulates the enchantment akin to butterflies, much akin to the allure of the show Heartstopper (2022- present). You find yourself obsessing over that fictional couple. You realise that you may never experience what they share and how they love. It’s a utopian world where everything manages to find its place, but you’re not part of that narrative. Nevertheless, you persistently attempt to find your own space within it. You desire someone to be your ‘Charlie,’ someone who prioritises your well-being above all else. You long for that cosy, comfortable room where you, your dog, and your partner can sleep peacefully. And as you ponder this longing, you continue to reject what surrounds you.

You are in a constant state of oscillation between these two realms – one real and one ideal. You have an understanding that your perception of love and desire is derived from a utopian existence, yet the intense longing to attain that idealised state is so potent that the realm of void feels almost innate to you. You are akin to everyone, embodying them, me, and an entire generation that is entranced by this void. Within this void, the boundaries between queerness and heteronormativity gets blurred, and the emotions associated with it feel intimately known, echoing with familiarity and shared experience.