the invisible string theory
an excerpt from my sophomore book "love is the antidote to extinction"
when i met my roommate—a literal decade ago—i was running away from a someone and a somewhere. there was no real destination in my teenage mind apart from far away.
when i met adele, i didn’t know her well enough to flee to chicago together like we did. but she was the counterpart (the anyone and elsewhere) that i desperately needed at the time.
i didn’t know that in the course of the next ten years, we’d go from strangers to quasi best friends to enemies1 back to strangers again to friendly acquaintances to close friends and then, now, to roommates who just really, really love each other.
all this to say: the invisible string theory2 works in mysterious ways. but back then, i wasn’t looking ahead. if i had been, i would have gotten tripped up in the minutiae. in looking back, however, it’s so evident. love has a way of leaving a trail, even if we can’t see it at the time.
trauma bond is in everyone’s vernacular nowadays—in part because everyone’s had one or about to have one—but it was not on our radar in 2015. in those initial months of friendship, adele and i formed a strong attachment, not derived from what was between us, but what was behind us.
here’s what i’ve learned about about trauma bonds3: they burn quickly and intensely, but once they’ve run their course, they leave behind very little in their wake. no one wants to live in the shadow of their traumas forever.
the first time around, when we graduated from the traumas that brought us to each other, we had no real foundation of who we were (to ourselves, but also to each other). still in our teens then, we felt entitled and beholden to each other without any real reason as to why. by the time the trauma bond burnt itself out, so did we.
a petty grievance (my doing) led to a silly fallout. but as we’ve both admitted since, it was easy to part ways without anything of substance to hold us together.
we did not know then that in our time apart, we were not just shedding our traumas, but old ideas and versions of ourselves. we reinvented ourselves again and again. we did so separately from each other and without any thought to the other. had our nineteen year old selves known how we’d end up, i’m sure they’d wrinkle their noses and say, “really? her?”
(yes, really, her.)
but we did not know then and it was not for us to know how the invisible string was there, simply biding it’s time for when we were ready to see it fully.
somewhere in the middle of my life, i started to run sideways. five cities in three years. a corporate job, then freelance art, then graduate school. it’s funny how you can paddle your feet as hard as you can and still just end up running parallel to the same life you’ve always lived.
during this time, friendships either formed as quickly as they fell apart, or they were amputated from me. the former was more common, but the latter always left a distinct new hole in my chest cavity.
the second time we stumbled into each other’s lives, it was pure happenstance by the way of a mutual friend. four years and a sheepish apology later, we found solid footing in being friendly, but not quite friends again.
when i moved to new england, we were excited by the prospect of rekindling more, but had no expectation for the friendship. over the next year, adele and i grew close while i was mourning two great loves4 of my life. we went from a text back here and there to monthly visits to each other’s cities. we did not know where we were headed then; we were just relieved to be in the company of someone we liked well enough.
during this, we became re-acquintanted for the third time. not as strangers like the first, or people who had recently settled a grievance like the second, but as adults. in meeting her this time, i could see the faint outline of the old adele i had known, but only as someone who had grown into herself over the years. in getting to know her now, she was less like the person i remembered and more like the person she was always meant to be.
when we shed our trauma bond, a new cord formed.
what was once a singular, simple tether between us, multiplied by the dozens, weaving together to create a love so steadfast that it’s worth putting into words. this invisible string took its time, but just the perfect amount. it was, in part, waiting for us to be ready for it.
and when we were, it took us right to where we were supposed to be.
i told few people that i was moving to new york instead of going back to los angeles and even less people the why. part of this story is not mine to tell, and the parts that are, can be summed with this:
when you’ve changed addresses as often as you’ve changed your hair color, at some point it all becomes the same backdrop.
the noise i chased in my early 20’s had lost its appeal. what i deeply desired was the consistent hum of familiarity. adele, over the past year, became that for me (alternatively, one woman’s yap is another woman’s white noise). we had grown to cherish each other’s closeness and moving to new york together felt like a natural next step5 as we considered the future.
(as far as why new york—
the answer is less glamorous and interesting than you’d imagine: adele can’t drive and new york is one of the few livable cities where you can walk and take public transportation.)
she packed up her life. i was ready to change mine. and 8 hours in an u-haul later, we found ourselves moving to the next chapter of our lives.
for 1.5 months, adele and i shared a studio sublet in chinatown with a single bed.
if there was ever a time for us to grow sick of each other and get a return on our investment to live together, it would have been then. but as we keep telling the story (because few people believe us), it only brought us closer together.
you learn a lot about a friend when you live virtually on top of each other for 40 days straight.
you also love them in tiny, unexpected ways that feel insignificant in the moment, but will one day—in a month, in a year, in a lifetime—later realize it was building towards something.
in my thesis at harvard, i wrote about how love is created through ritual. and as we built ours, step by step, the love we had for each other became more apparent.
with every new bit of information learned, the more it became effortless to love. and the more effortless the love was, the more intentional we became with our care. meeting adele was a happy accident (both times), but all the rest was on purpose.
this time around, we weren’t only just familiar with each other’s traumas; we learned each other’s idiosyncrasies, preferences, (found) families, vocal tics, playlists, and not to mention—all the other intimate knowledge of living together. we got to know each other the way a mirror sees a reflection.
the alamo drafthouse is an unconventional backdrop to any sort of serious declaration, but not unheard of.
a couple weeks ago, i turned to her to ask what flavor of milkshake i should get; she blurted out that i was her best friend the same way you would tell your middle school crush that you liked them, almost shyly. because even as adults, there is an inherent vulnerability to admitting you love someone and asking if they would like to be in your life forever.
until that moment, i don’t think i’ve thought about friendships in such plain and tender terms since i had braces. but she is my best friend. i just hadn’t thought to put a label to it. almost without me realizing it, she became one of the greatest love stories of my life—not just by proxy, but by choice.
best friends forever is a silly endearment, and most of us have been burnt by the idea of it6, but love has a way of reviving the dead. in loving and being loved by adele, it wasn’t just a resurrection of friendship, but the act of breathing new life into it altogether. we are remade all the time through our relationships, and there we were, watching a matinee, reborn.
(and if it matters at all: she never gave me an answer, but i got chocolate.)
this is my second time living in new york, but the first time in my adult life that i’ve ran towards a life i wanted. call it my saturn return or call it the twilight conclusion of my twenties, but the clarity that comes with being safe and loved has given me a new perspective on what, exactly, i wanted to do with my one precious life7.
for all the ways love lives under our skin, it also becomes another set of eyes for when we cannot see ourselves clearly. it offers its ear, its hands, and its shoulders. this, i think, is what people speak of when they say embodied love. adele not only loves me, but she lives it daily.
it’s easy to tell someone—a stranger, a friend, a roommate—they deserve love. it is an actual labor of love to show them exactly how. adele did not wait for someone else to swoop into my life, or even for me to feel deserving of it. she simply picked up the pieces of me that she saw, however imperfect and undone, and said, “now. you’re going to know love now.”
and when someone loves you with their whole self, without asking you to justify why, it changes you fundamentally. how can it not? the window of my own ability to love has been open because of the people, like adele, in my life. this is how the light gets in. this is how love enters.
for a long time, i wondered what will remain of my name after i pass? for most of that time, i thought “nothing.” what does death spare? what will the earth remember? in part, that is why i write: to leave behind something greater than what living memory will permit.
adele didn’t just give me the gift of friendship. she also gave me this: because of loves like ours, no matter what i do for the rest of my life, i’ll have known that i walked this life beloved.
editor’s note: i’m sorry for the infrequent posting! i’ve been working on my second book. i hope to return to a regular(ish) publishing schedule soon.
enemies is dramatic, but we were eighteen and even then, i think both of us knew it was never quite that serious.
invisible string theory, in a more poetic sense, is the idea that unseen forces or connections tie people and events together, almost like fate. it’s a way of explaining how certain moments or relationships feel destined, even though we can't see the "strings" that connect them.
a trauma bond is a strong emotional attachment that forms between two people, often in toxic or abusive relationships, where intense, negative experiences create a sense of dependence and false closeness.
platonic loves, but great loves nonetheless.
we both thought, at one point or another, that it might be a mistake to move to another city and live together. we took a chance nonetheless.
to illustrate how complicated friendships can be, i wrote a children’s book about it with someone i am no longer friends with.
I loved the way you wrote this. So good! And I am happy you have Adele in such a lonely world.
I love this. You've managed to beautifully manifest everything I've been feeling lately into the most beautiful prose. I know I'm going to keep coming back to this.