I adore living in a four season climate, but if we could skip summer I’d be all for it.

I hate hot sticky August weather as much as I hate canned parmesan cheese and choke chain dog collars. The other reason for my aversion is that sleeping in humid weather is very difficult for me, on top of not being a great sleeper to begin with.

Lately, to help me snooze at night, I’ve been putting on episodes of an anime called Non Non Biyori. This is a slice of life show revolving around the life of four girls who live in a remote Japanese mountain town. The coming of age themes centered around the characters are reflected through the episodic changing of seasons. Typically, the arcs begin when its spring and end with winter.

Seasons, for me, aren’t just fall to summer though. Like the quarterly temperature changes, I’ve also experienced seasons, particularly three in my life, each what I consider a season of loneliness.

But while I was solitary, I was also never truly alone in any of them. The day I discovered gaming, I had a companion that would forever be with me through the hardest periods of life. This companion would eventually lead me to find a wonderful human companion.

Thanks to COVID-19, I am currently experiencing one of those lonely seasons. But to understand the place I’m coming from, we have to go back about twenty years.

Season 1: Life

Nine times out of ten, a child’s Kindergarten orientation goes smoothly. Unfortunately, statistics force some of us to be part of the one percent. What in the world made me vomit in front of my teacher and new classmates? Nerves? Early signs of my dairy intolerance? To this day I really can’t remember. On my first long haul flight last year I got sick too. It was the middle of the night and the couple next to me was cuddled up and there wasn’t enough time to ask them to move so I could run to the bathroom.

Therefore, in true quick-thinking Erin mode, I tore open the plastic bag the disposable pillow came in and went to town. Honestly, I’m wondering if its just some weird rite of passage phenomenon for anything new and scary I do.

My first day bad luck followed me into the rest of the year when I couldn’t seem to click with any of my classmates or the very cold teacher, to the point where I would often sit alone with a book. I like to think picture books were my gateway into the world of nerdiness, because I found a new level of solemn getting lost in them. The stories of Arthur never hurt me. The stories of Miss Spider never treated me like an outcast.

So the night my dad brought home a VHS with Pokémon episodes featuring the three Kanto starters, I was hooked. And when a Game Boy was finally in my hand, there was nothing quite like having the freedom to escape to a world that was so much less cruel than the one I was living in.

Season 2: Loss

Of course, things got better, as they always do. I found myself spotting in and out of the Pokémon franchise but my fascination with anime never quite left me. I would always be grateful for Pokémon’s company, and had no idea it would do the same in the future.

A small tradition I’ve started for myself is making the half hour trek out to my nearest local Build-A-Bear two or three times a year when they come out with a Pokémon in their collection that appeals to me. Typically, it’s never the same employee, so I always get to tell them about how the franchise was such an important part of my childhood, and that is why I’m a mid twenties woman in a shop to make stuffed animals. Sometimes they ask, “are you making this for someone?” and I’m tempted to tell them how it started with me seeing the ad for their new Psyduck doll at the right time, right when I was forced to mourn one of the greatest friends of my life.

“John said I’m not allowed to hang out with you anymore.” This isn’t the kind of message you expect to get from your best friend of 13 years on a whim. I had always found her men of choice to be on the controlling side, but as a friend you’re supposed to be supportive of who they care about. I only understood this once I started to fall into the motions of my own relationship, realizing that there are degrees of complexity in every bond as unique as a fingerprint. I always thought maybe the domineering trait only looked that way from my perspective. So what was my perspective supposed to be 0n that? Somehow it was buying a doll of Emilia from Re:Zero.

One of my favorite places to visit when I’m in New York City is Image Anime over in Midtown. It’s a dream collection of everything from figures to keychains to plushies, anything and everything a nerd could want basically. They particularly won me when I saw a large of plush of a character I adored on the website. So when I was making plans to see the Tale of Genji exhibit at the Met over on the Upper East Side, I told my friend we had to stop by the shop. My excitement quickly fanned out however with the message “can John come?”

After what you see my first public school experience was like, I was never one to have the heart to exclude people, so of course I said yes. At that point I had yet to understand the context of his controlling behavior. “He has me on a strictly pescatarian diet”, was the excuse she gave when he made reservations at a seafood restaurant without asking anyone.

Season 3: Love

Life changed in many ways when I met my boyfriend. One of the most significant, however, was that anime was no longer an escape for me. I didn’t want to hide from reality anymore because now I had everything I wanted in it. Even though Fran and I live countries apart, I liked him so much that I didn’t mind the long distance. Plus, once I went to visit him, it didn’t seem as far fetched of a travel as I’d expected. Unfortunately, COVID-19 had other plans in store.

My intention, come February, was to start planning my next trip over there. I was so excited, already writing down things I wanted to do. We had even talked about driving north and visiting a place to lookout for Andean condors. When I travel I love to see wild animals in their natural habitats; I was lucky enough on my last trip there to visit a magellanic penguin colony on Argentina’s coast. If that didn’t work out, I was going to see about organizing a visit in December. Living on the East Coast your whole life, you get curious about what spending the holidays in a warm place is like.

Now, I will be lucky if I get there this year at all.

Season 3b: Love in the Time of COVID

Gaming, among many other discourses, is our love language. I bought Okami because he recommended it to me and I wanted to impress him by showing an interest in the things he liked. One of our favorite things to do together is lay in bed and play Fate: Grand Order unanimously. A stranger would look at us with our phones and wonder if we were ignoring one another, but in actuality that’s the complete opposite of what’s happening. See, I am a very anxious, sometimes neurotic person by nature. Yet when I’m in Fran’s presence, I don’t feel that there’s anything to be afraid of.

The pandemic is a terrifying thing, but when I pick up my phone, open Grand Order, and start to farm for experience cards to level Musashi, the calming demeanor of my love is right there with me. When I harvest my eggplant fields in Stardew Valley, he’s telling me everything is going to be okay. Distance and a germ have nothing on our emotional connection. We even regularly simultaneously stream shows together.

People tend to say “well I could never handle that” when I tell them I’m in a long distance relationship, and while it’s true that it’s not for everyone, the idea of togetherness tends to be misunderstood by humans.

Nobody wants to live far away from their significant other, but when you really want something, there’s an invisible magic that happens. This is beautifully summed up at  the end of Mrs. Doubtfire, when Robin Williams answers a little girl’s letter in reference to separation.

“If there’s love dear, those are the ties that bind, and you’ll have a family in your heart, forever.”

A travel ban might be keeping us apart, but it’s not keeping us from doing what we love together. Or loving one another, for that matter.

Sorry, COVID, you just can’t keep a good nerd down.