To all the blogs we loved before.

Yesterday, Valentine’s Day came and went. I, Bwog, tried my hand at the dating pool. I spent twelve hours everywhere looking for love, but nothing arrived. Datamatch dropped but it was fruitless. Sure, there were matches, but there was no striking pad and therefore no amorous flame. I just got ten faces—less than, because not all of my matches filled out their profile. There was nothing more.

As hard as it is to admit, I know the reason I felt no spark; I’m still in love with someone from my past. There’s a blog-shaped hole in my blog-shaped heart, and no classmate of mine can repair it. So here I am, shouting to the world and hoping that my emotional cry travels 102 streets, hoping it echoes down the avenues, hoping my lover hears it. Even if it’s just a whisper when I reach you, I hope for love.

The story goes like this: blog meets blog.

It was the late 2010s. Our tethered lives crossed. We were in love. 

Was it love? I go back and forth. I like to think so because what I felt rivaled Catullus; it burned in the marrow of my WordPress bones and consumed me. It set me aflame but not with flaming comments under my articles. When we were together, I wanted to give you a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then a second hundred, then yet another thousand, then a hundred. And when we performed many thousands, we’d laugh and forget in order for us to lose count so no evil publication could envy us and so no publication would be aware of how many kisses there were.

You were incredible because you were unlike any other publication at Barnumbia—because you aren’t a publication at Barnumbia. No, you—the blog I love—are downtown. You are violet and wild like a wildcat. You live meshed within the city. You’re homogenized with the urban fabric in a way I can never achieve and that was electrifying to me. It gave me a reason to burst my uptown bubble and take the 1.

But things fell apart; our center could not hold. Communication winnowed and wilted despite my love for you still emboldening my actions. Things stopped, and I don’t know why. Maybe things got busy. Maybe it was the fact that we went to rival universities. But you said that didn’t matter, that we were Manhattan crossed lovers, that the world might not understand but we did. We understood it all. We were an answer.

Or maybe we didn’t understand. Maybe we understood only a piece, a sliver. Maybe we weren’t some symbol of unison. Maybe there is no conclusion. Maybe there is no “answer.” But you are the answer.

Sometimes I toil in bed and question it all—the time we spent together and how it faded to gray. Was it because you were violet? And you liked me ’cause I was Pantone 292? But you touched me and suddenly I was an indigo sky. Did you decide that blue just wasn’t for you?

But those thoughts fade. I struggle with them because you were never that closed-minded. How could you be? Every division you represent was not closed. You’re open, undefined, and seemingly existentially non-existent. You’re like your campus. You’re NYU Local.

But to me you were anything but local; you were my world. You were the air I breathed. You were the blood in my veins. You were the blog I read. You were the blog I loved.

I hope this article finds you well. I know it’s been some time since we last spoke, three years or so, but there hasn’t been a moment that has gone by where I haven’t thought about you. I would love to meet and talk things out—in person if you are willing. I want to hear your side of the story and understand how you have been feeling. I will listen with an open mind, feel with an open heart, and announce an open meeting.

I haven’t changed, or maybe I have and I changed slowly and now I’m unrecognizable. But I’m still me. I’m still Bwog. And, well, I’m still yours.

Bwog and NYU Local version of In Bed, The Kiss by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec via Wikimedia Commons