I Need You So Much Closer: How Normal People Redefined Romance
About the series: “I Need You So Much Closer”
Intimacy — what does it mean to you? Death Cab for Cutie sings about it as a yearning impossibility in their 2000s classic “Transatlanticism,” some only view it as sex, others have an immense fear of the feeling. It can mean everything and nothing or be achieved with everyone and no one but yourself; it’s a complicated concept that changes with experience, especially in such an odd circumstance as quarantine. At Camp Thirlby, we relish in this vast range and simply view intimacy as an act of closeness — with romantic partners, friends, strangers, even yourself. It can be a simultaneously rewarding and terrifying experience, and self-isolation can amplify those feelings — especially when intimacy feels so unattainable. Our Camp Counselors have decided to reflect on the ways in which they find, or fail to find, this closeness, either inside or outside of the pandemic. Ranging from finding new ways of closeness during a time of crisis or rethinking past notions of intimacy, these odes to needing the affinity of people act as a reminder to its importance in a time when everything feels so distant.
I used to be certain about love. I knew what it looked like, and what it didn’t. I recognized the signals, noticed patterns, made notes, and came to conclusions. I had consumed enough content (YA fiction novels, television shows, romantic comedies, albums dedicated to lovers) to feel confident in my analyses: this is love, that is not.
Of course, this changed once I found myself within it. I floundered, unsure of how to act, how to feel, how to be. I was a sophomore in college and I refused relationships, proclaimed my independence, and insisted to anyone who would listen that I “didn’t want anything serious.” But, a boy studying abroad in Germany texted me everyday, and I found myself walking home from the club each morning, excited to sit on the tiled floor of my tiny Barcelona homestay to text him. I wrote to myself in my phone’s Notes app at the time, “what the fuck are you doing???? You’re ruining EVERYTHING”.
I don’t need to explain that we live in an age of refuting love. I was conditioned, as we all are, to protect my heart at all costs — from the fuckboys and softboys alike who could and likely would: gaslight me, ghost me, or both. Lorrie Moore wrote recently of millennials in the New York Review of Books, “They believe in relationships rather than romance and, even then, the relationships are contracts full of riders, waivers, releases, and other addenda.” In a way, she’s right: the pervasiveness of hookup culture leaves most of us craving and seeking intimacy in any form: from one night stands, to pre-arranged hookup plans. We agree to sleep with other people exclusively, to evade labels, to sidestep commitment, and steer clear of dependence.
But she’s wrong about romance. We are constantly expanding our conception of love — and that's not a bad thing. We reject standard norms of dating in favor of something greater. We find intimacy and romance in the relationships we have with total strangers, with our friends, with ourselves. We manifest and accept forms of love that previous generations eschewed. We redefine what a “relationship” is and question what it should be. (Maybe this isn’t how things ought to be, but it is what it is. The system’s fucked, we’re just making do.
That, I think, is what Sally Rooney, author of bestselling novel and BBC television show, Normal People, captures so well. Rooney's second novel follows the small, Irish lives of wealthy, isolated Marianne and poor, popular Connell as they develop a relationship that, as Lorrie Moore noted (in her review of the book and show) carries its own set of regulations. They navigate the surprisingly complex and rocky territory that is love, romance, and intimacy in your twenties. Rooney writes a non-standard, nonlinear, very normal love story, a romance that resonates with many of us who are young and confused and figuring it out.
Marianne and Connell never really date, but their relationship is nevertheless saturated in love and understanding and intimacy. They are romantic only in secret, and their lives revolve around each other intangibly, never explicitly. But their love is undeniably special, as vague and convoluted as it is. Rooney gives us a chance to rethink our conceptions of what people can be for each other. She poses the question: “Is it love?” and let’s the reader decide.
When I read Normal People, I was (almost ironically) riding the trains in Europe. I had tentatively ended things with the boy I used to talk to from the tiles of my bathroom floor two years before. We had broken up twice, for reasons and non-reasons, and kept drifting back to one another, inexplicably. (Rooney writes: “...two people, who, over the course of several years, apparently could not leave one another alone”). It was a point of contention among my friends who didn’t want to see me hurt. I told myself I wanted a clean, easy love, a fresh start, to let go, move on.
Then I read Normal People.
Have you ever heard of a paradigm shift? It’s a fundamental change in how you perceive the world around you. It’s how Copernicus discovered that the Earth was not, in fact, the center of the universe. As I read Normal People, my perception of myself and my relationship shifted. I realized I could let myself admit that I was very much still in love with someone who was very much still in love with me. I realized that my standards for what constituted love were outdated and rigid, and that I was lying to myself about what I wanted. I could let myself love, and see what happened. I could see what we might become for one another.
It’s been three years since I sat on the bathroom floor in Spain exchanging quips over Snapchat with an insomniac boy in Germany, and one year since I admitted I still loved him. We have no idea when our anniversary is, so we choose dates at random. We don’t erase our history — we instead carry it with us, even when it gets heavy. He makes me breakfast and I find him flat rocks to skip at the beach. I know that this is love, “she doesn’t wonder about that anymore” (p. 262). Everyday I feel my love for him bubble up in my throat like a laugh or a sob, everyday feels newer than the last.
“No one can be completely independent of other people completely, so why not give up the attempt, she thought, go running in the opposite direction, depend on people for everything” (p. 262).
About the Author
Megan Burns (she/her) is a social researcher at New York University mainly interested in identity, morality, and policy. An observer by nature, both her personal and professional work is largely inspired by the people around her. When she's not writing (which is often) she enjoys art galleries, reading short stories (or long stories), shirley temples, dancing, and collecting knick-knacks.
