I’m not entirely sure how I came to type “lovesickness” into the search bar when I should have been working one day, but I did.

Actually I do know how, but it has to do with social distancing, polyamory, and other things I can’t be bothered unpacking right now.

Probably among some of the more valuable life skills I have learned in the last couple of years is the skill of just sitting with my feelings. Having them, acknowledging them, and continuing on with my plans regardless.

And I had realised that I noticed that I felt myself feeling lovesick.

This feeling lived right on my sternum and was connected to my stomach. It made my muscles seize with the same aching endurance of holding a plank. It made me want to fold in on myself, rest my head on my knees and wrap my arms around my shins. It made me want to bury my face in a warm body that wasn’t mine. It made me want to cling like an infant.

It made me want to choose someone. It made me want to find a person to solicit affection from. As though their attention would function like Vick’s VaporRub and I’d spread it onto my aching chest and find myself breathing easier.

But I’ve been here before and I know it doesn’t work like that.

I have learned that as much as it may feel like the only way to the other side of this feeling is through another person I know it doesn’t work like that.

My lovesickness isn’t the absence of affection in my life. I’m lucky to be socially distancing alongside my fiancé.e whose second love language is quality time. It’s my first love language. Their first love language is touch, it’s my second or third. Finding ways to stay sane together in our apartment the size of a food court bathroom has, curiously enough, been excellent for our connection.

I have a person I want attention from. And then there’s a second person. And if the second person reads this they’ll think they’re the first person. So I’m being weirdly coy, even to myself, about what I want. I get scared to say things out loud because then they become real. And some things I want to become real and others I don’t. But I don’t get to choose. I suppose they’re all real.

I miss the second person somewhat. But I don’t think it can be recovered.

The search says I need to be in love to be experiencing lovesickness.

I don’t feel lovesick for the person I’m in love with. They’re right here. They just kissed me on the forehead.

Crushsickness isn’t a word.

The search thinks I want to talk about crushing injuries.

A Newfoundland folk singer called Selina Boland has a song called Crushsick. A mobile phone camera watches her perform it on stage in Calgary in 2012. I wonder who she’s singing about. I wonder if she feels that way about them still.

I wrote songs about my girlfriend in 2014. She misunderstood the first line I ever wrote about her, which is a great lyric I’ll never use. I have forgotten how to play the songs I wrote. I didn’t try to remember them.

I love myself poetic. I hate myself poetic. I’m embarrassed to take up space with my art. I’m embarrassed to call it art.

The feeling has passed somewhat. I should get back to work.