I had a boyfriend in college named Bill. It was my first serious long-term relationship. We loved each other. And it was college and we different aspirations and increasingly different political views and it wasn’t really a relationship destined for our lives beyond campus and we broke up before graduation.

Bill had cystic fibrosis and passed away six years later. We were no longer in touch. He was married by then, I was about to move to New Jersey to be with the man to whom I am happily married today. But still, I had loved him.

His birthday is at the end of June and some years I notice it and give a little wave toward the sky, remembering things he loved, like The Beatles and that interminable German WWII movie Das Boot. Other years, the day comes and goes without my notice. Like I said, we’d not been in touch.

But this year, I noticed his birthday as soon as I filled out my daily planner and then found myself thinking about him for days. I wasn’t fixated, but as the pandemic and the protests and the election continued their bewildering evolution, I found myself frequently wondering what he would think. How different this world looks from the one he left fourteen years ago. I pictured him laughing – as someone who lived decades longer than he was expected to, he often laughed at dark things. That laughter was a mix of fear, sadness, and deep familiarity with a fundamental lack of control over his own future. It was the laugh of someone who knew he was living on borrowed time, wishing he could feel grateful when mostly that fact was just shitty and terrifying.

So why was I spending so much time this summer thinking about (talking to?) a Republican ex-boyfriend from decades ago? Maybe it’s because this time we’re living in is reminding me of values I solidified in college but have not been pressed in meaningful ways to uphold. I’m thinking a lot about those days where my ideals took root and how age has added context and a deeper understanding of the complexities of the world, but hasn’t fundamentally changed my beliefs in what is right and just. He was there while I was figuring that out, and he was figuring out his own stuff, even if we landed in different places. Maybe it’s because my level of interaction with real people is a fraction of what it was a year ago, so I’ve taken to conjuring ghosts. Maybe it’s because I’ve felt so weighed down by everything, despite the absurd levels of comfort with which I dwell, that I need my ass kicked by someone who has the standing to say “Hey! Knock it off! You’re here aren’t you?”

I think it’s the last one, mostly. Despite the “shitty and terrifying” all around, I’m still here. Right now, that is everything.