Love(s) In a 2021 Millennial’s Life (on The Gen Z Cusp)
Big Sean and Jhené Aiko in Body Language’s music video
It’s way past February 14th, which is not only the day I was born, but it happens to be also the Day of Love, known as Valentine’s Day. Most Western societies celebrate this day by honoring their loved ones, whether they’re romantic partners, friends, or family members. Given my personal story, I couldn’t give a crap about Valentine’s Day. It is my day first and foremost. It’s just a normal day like the others: love should be honored every single day, no exceptions.
There are different kinds of love that everyone experiences. However, society puts a lot of labels and pressures on the specific types of affections we might experience during our lifetime, which can hurt our perception of love overall during our upbringing. I believe that in order to understand and develop healthy practices of loving ourselves and others, it is necessary to have an intersectional approach to our lifestyle in general. In fact, I think it is imperative to allow ourselves to explore and focus on different love interests, which can go from the people we love to our favorite subject in school, tasks at work, or our entrepreneurial projects and investments.
If you want to get rich in love, you’ve got to diversify. You’ve got to find different channels to pour your love. Love is one feeling with different emotions and outcomes.
As a millennial in 2021 America, I’ve changed my perception and understanding of love several times. Before moving to the United States, my love practices were pretty much boxed up. I thought that genuinely loving a boy would solve all my problems. I thought that rejections could never happen if you really loved someone or something. I thought that loving my family wasn’t going to be a questionable issue. I thought that loving my friends would solve our long-distance relationship. Sometimes love isn’t enough, but it doesn’t mean that love isn’t everything. After many ups and downs that lead me to dark phases of depression, I found out that love is in fact everything in life and it has the ability to move it all. Love doesn’t kill you. Obsession does, fear does, boredom does: all of those can kill you.
You can get an idea of what kind of roller coasters I‘ve been if you read my book or if you take a glimpse at my college diary. In this current phase of my life, I’m very much calm when it comes to my love life. My motivation is on point, my passions are vivid each and every day, and my romantic life gets bit by bit fulfilled. I don’t feel any rush if it wasn’t of course for some bureaucratic and sociological reasons that a woman like me must face - a Black Italian woman in media living abroad. I don’t feel the need to ask for reassurance or the need to compare myself too much to others. I still look up to other people's career paths because I want to learn and I must have my eyes and ears open in order to catch the best opportunity, but I came to the conclusion that my own path is exclusive to me in its details and steps.
During these last nine months of OPT (Optional Practical Training), I’ve gotten the chance to explore on my own time and schedule my deepest interests and passions without being tied to an academic institution. I’ve also got the time (and luck, I guess) to balance a romantic relationship and a self-love relationship, by giving the same amount of attention to both. I’ve got to nurture my friendship with distance, but with also new means and schedules. I’m no perfect. Stuff happens. Some days I lack self-esteem, some days I want to be quiet and not interact with anyone. This is also the result of my personal period of uncertainty that I’m going through, but despite it all, I learned to love my life like I never did.
Self-Love
The best way to navigate these challenging times is to live in the moment. I know this might sound impossible to do, especially for someone like me who’s living life dictated by bureaucratic papers and deadlines. However, I’m still a person made of flesh and bones, who is entitled to prioritize mental health over everything with any means possible. I can’t afford therapy, but this lack of support didn’t slow down my run to self-love. It is now a steady run, practiced every day. Sometimes I don’t feel like running, but moving is always a good exercise, right?
Familial Love
We shouldn’t assume that loving family members is easy and natural. Being on good terms with your own family can be triggering to someone. My love for my family comes easily because, despite the ups and downs we had, I feel comfortable, secure, and most importantly loved, by my mom, dad, and closest relatives. My affection is natural, but it has faced tough times, especially when I started seeing my parents without their legal label and just as a real “woman” and “man”. Once I’ve accepted and balanced my perceptions of them as mother and woman as well as father and man, I reached another level of appreciation, respect, and love towards them. I understand some of their choices, their likes, and dislikes. This is a kind of love that takes time to develop and get enriched and it requires specific circumstances to make these changes and improvements.
Romantic Love
For a long time, I’ve swum in the world of love thinking that romantic love was the solution to all the problems. I thought that if a man loved me I would feel better about everything, I would get more chances to achieve my dreams, and be supported 24/7. One day I genuinely fell in love, pure love. I fell in love without hearing “I love you”, though, and that hurt me. I fell in love convinced that being someone’s first love was the best and most important thing: if I wasn’t that kind of person to somebody, I would mean nothing. After long months in unhealthy environments, trapped in toxic friendships, and exhausting long days of being misunderstood, I realized that I could never be indeed someone’s first love nor someone’s ultimate and “best” love. However, this could never make me less important than others. I started shifting my mentality. I made drastic changes in embarking on a journey that saw me as the only protagonist - I took trips, lots of them, and hung out with my female friends, usually older than me (as I would see them as my older sisters, a familial figure I’ve never gotten the chance to have). I started giving attention to only the people I liked to be with, without feeling rejected. I built a wall I thought could protect me from people who didn’t want me with the same energy as mine. Then I decided to break this wall and live day by day, taking things slowly. All that energy I would give to those I had loved and cared for, I would give ounce by once to myself. It was a very hard process, but necessary. I was lucky to physically move to another place, with other people and other things to think of - that’s why it was a long process too because I couldn’t remove myself from many circumstances while I was heartbroken. Then I started meeting up with new people, being more open to exploring my surroundings, and get more into life experiences with new friends. One day this nonchalant attitude turned one of my friendships into a love interest. I opened my heart again. I didn’t regret it. This friend became my boyfriend. For the first time, at 23 years old, I heard the words “I love you”. Yes, for long months I was still doubting and thinking about the past, but one day I woke up and just… loved this person. I wasn’t expecting to experience this at this stage of my life. I firmly believed I could never receive love ever again and I was okay with this concept. Then I realized why I started loving again a man in my life: because I was already loving myself with nobody on my radar. Even if this wonderful story with my current love won’t last, I know that somehow I will always have me and other kinds of love that can make fill me up. I don’t need a person to love, I have me.
Friendship Love
I’ve had two major heartbreaks: one romantic, and one with a friend. The last one didn’t hurt at first. I thought I could replace it with a boyfriend. I thought I could build a friendship soon and fast. That wasn’t my case. During these years I’ve always been searching for “the best friend”, the person who could replace my ex-bestie from home. That person never came with that same energy and background. For a long time, I thought I really didn’t deserve any of this and I was a bad person to just exist. Nobody in America has ever really referred to me as “their best friend”. I still don’t know if I’m someone’s best friend. I’m always there for my friends and in my heart, I always hope to be understood, but sometimes I think that my lifestyle and my background get in the way. Friends will always mean a lot to me, especially because I’m an only child living abroad with no family by my side. Female friendships mean a lot to me because some of them have also saved me from bad situations. Sometimes I’m afraid to lose it all because my life is always on the move. Every time I know that my love is so strong it can’t really go away, though. Somehow, I’m still figuring out how to nurture this important kind of love and leave a good impact on other people’s lives. I’m also aware that now we’re adults, and older people move differently. Life gets in the way: other loves get in the way. Your best friend at this point can be your lover, your partner, your pet… you never know. I just know I’ve got a big heart for a handful of people.
Humanitarian Love
This type of love comes from the value I give to freedom. There are different personal reasons why I’m so invested in equity, intersectional feminism, and other humanitarian causes. All of these things reflect my background, both my past and my future. They determine the present choices that will lead me to those spaces I want to be part of. A great portion of my day is spent by thinking, elaborating theories, and getting educated on what kind of solution the communities I’m part of can actually use to help themselves. Being a Black Italian woman isn't easy. But I love my Blackness and I will never give up on defending, protecting, and celebrating it.
Especially during and after my first major romantic heartbreak, I was afraid of love. I was super convinced that could never be an option in my life. However, life happened and woke me up. In the words of Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina, “I will never, never again run away from life or from love, either”. My courage to spread and control my affections is the best love I’ve ever practiced, to myself and others.
