Story by Milagros Huang // @milihuang // She/Her

Cinematography by Riley Church // @artofchurch

Motion graphics by Paris Eskew // She/Her

I came to Austin as someone that wanted to know the ways of love. Its pathway shines a bright light of the unknown, and calls to me. I would wonder what adventures await me by walking through that door of love.

And after a while…I come with news.

The pandemic called for many to socially isolate. I’ve been observing that by always being home and away from people, day by day doing the same routine and staring at the computer screen, one tends to get bored eventually.

And I am pretty sure most people reading this know what type of bored I mean *wink wink*. The oh-so-very lonely kind.

The world was on a pause. Everything was still and picturesque in a way. It was as if the world around seemed like looking over a painting of a landscape exhibited in a museum. The peace of the still picture is serene and calm at first. Eventually, you just want to look past it and want something different.

The painting for me looked like too many nights of romantic comedies, sitting by my apartment’s balcony scrolling through posts of new couples, waking up every morning to seeing no one in the kitchen, the same routine as yesterday. Watercolors of sunrises and sunsets blurred and blended together.

I found myself and others diving deep into the same rabbit hole. Like Alice, at one point in the timeline, I didn’t know my direction nor where I was even standing. I sought guidance from the Cheshire Cat’s mad wide smile of wanting to go somewhere.

It felt good being with that person. I did enjoy his company in this almost-apocalyptic landscape deserted island of none. I laughed, cried, and smiled with him. Up to a point, I felt really close to him despite no feelings of love. The harsh truth is that I indeed was as bored as him when we crossed paths in that snippet of our timelines. In the instances that we would meet, a business transaction would come into place. Things went smoothly for a while under our unwritten and unspoken contract.

Did I like him though? Yes.

Did it come out at the beginning, middle, or end that I had feelings? I cannot tell specifically.

There is no myopic definition of how love is. There is no instruction manual of how to date. Finding love in this way, I would say it is kind of tricky. Are both parties going and walking on the same path? Or did one party decide to take another route? At the end of the journey, you transition your eyes away from the road to your surroundings and realize that you both are separated kilometers away by an ocean. What happened?

It brings out the question of: how are you seeing yourself at the end of the road?

Together or…

Separated?

The only answer I can think of is that the person took another road that I was not aware of, a secret trail, an unknown path. I did not realize until it was too late to go back. The trail that he took distorted into a concrete wall. The only thing that could be done was to walk past it.

In the end, I found myself alone at the top of a hill looking down to the ocean. I asked myself, “Why did he not come with me?”

My final answer after pondering and wondering at the top of the hill, looking at the sparkling stars of the dark, feeling the cool breeze of the night sky: he might be the right person at some unforeseeable point ahead. But now it is not the right time as there are so many currents pulling us away from one another.