Momo Yamaguchi on ‘Hello, Limerence’, Germaphobes and the Importance of Delusional Crushes in a World Full of Shit

Words: Hatti Rex

“I’m not a virgin if that’s what you’re asking,” author Momo Yamaguchi laughs from inside my computer screen. I’ve just asked whether she has any likeness to her protagonist from her debut novel Hello, Limerence, not realising the full weight of what that entails. Like many of us, Mika lives within her imagination that runs wild with delusional obsessions across love, life and friendship taking over from all rational thought. It’s relatable for anyone working a soul-sucking office job in their mid-twenties whose social life isn’t exactly popping off. Who hasn’t conjured up an imaginary workplace romance to fixate on just to get your ass out the house in the morning?

Written four years ago and set to be released this June, Hello, Limerence is physically 199 pages long, brimming with sexually frustrated and self-deprecating internal dialogue, easily devoured in a single sitting or over the span of a weekend as it’s hard to pull yourself away from.

“I think she's super self aware,” Yamaguchi explains, likening her irrational headspace to that endlessly reposted Margaret Atwood quote (“You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”) Through her incredibly active imagination, Mika acts out scenarios that are either socially inappropriate or that she doesn’t have the courage to go through with. “She can't stop herself from wanting the things that she knows society expects her to strive for, be it physical beauty or romantic love. Love is a form of escapism for her.” 

“Having a crush is so universal - wherever you grow up in the world, a situationship or a humiliationship is practically like a rite of passage, right? I definitely did tap into those feelings, but dialled up to 100.”

Mika’s inner world, whilst chaotic, is both provocative and laugh-out-loud funny, inspired in part by the Japanese and American rom-coms Momo grew up with. One of her favourites is the 2016 television series Busujima Yuriko no Sekirara Nikki (translated to Busujima Yuriko's Candid Diary), where a young reporter is incredibly distrustful of men that she has two boyfriends on the go in case one fumbles. Mika’s favourite rom-com, however, would “obviously be Bottoms”. 

Growing up in Tokyo, where her character also lives, fictionally, the currently single Yamaguchi notes how the dating culture in Japan feels more monogamous. It’s not as common to have a roster. “You go on a few dates with someone and then you’re boyfriend girlfriend, almost immediately and then you get to know each other over that process,” she explains, even hopeless romantic Mika tends to only fantasise about one crush at a time. In London, however — where Yamaguchi lives now after having won a randomly selected visa lottery — a more casual approach to dating feels like the norm. 

“But I think having a crush is so universal,” Momo adds. And just like Mika, who hasn’t casually stalked a crush’s Instagram or mentally sued an ex for both time wasting and to retrieve nudes sent under different circumstances? “Wherever you grow up in the world, a situationship or a humiliationship is practically like a rite of passage, right? I definitely did tap into those feelings, but dialled up to 100.” There’s surely aspects of Mika in all of us. 

In January of this year, Dazed’s deputy editor Serena Smith wrote a scathing piece titled Limerence is Bullshit, hammering how the term has been chucked around quite loosely to describe an intense crush. After all, aren’t these feelings universal? Don’t we all unravel slightly when we like someone? “I think it's a very thin line,” Yamaguchi explains on the differences between a normal crush and experiencing full-blown limerence. “I think it teeters into limerence when it becomes more obsessive when you experience lows more often than your highs.” If fancying someone is making you behave in extremely unusual ways, perhaps it’s the latter. 

“In your teens and your 20s, you have a streak of narcissism in that you think you know no one else has ever experienced,” Yamaguchi describes, which rings true of the increasing trend of using the term to categorise their feelings as something both superior and chronically . “‘These feelings that I've had — no one else would or could possibly understand what I'm going through’, right? But if you read or watch media from decades ago or 100 years ago, or type in super specific prompts into Reddit, you'll find out that actually, you're not special, everyone has experienced what you're going through before.” 

It’s so rare for people to share anything actually new online nowadays that any time something truly bizarre is expressed, ‘1 original sentence left’ is posted in response. Yamaguchi smiles, “It’s actually really humbling and comforting, I think, and it makes you feel a lot less lonely.”  

Aside from the relatable rollercoaster-ride inner workings of the young working woman, Hello, Limerence also captures the isolation of a global pandemic, and how these unprecedented events can bring lonely people back into your life for better or worse. Enter: Uncontrollable Bowel Syndrome. You read that right, a global spread of verbal and literal diarrhea, leaving Mika and many others trapped inside their apartments away from the germs. “I'm sure it fucked her up in ways that it fucked us up and you know we're still processing [re: COVID], but I'm I would like to believe that she would have gotten to where she was eventually,” Yamaguchi explains, who was in Japan which felt like a bubble with it’s own sense of safety at the time. “During the actual pandemic, I did see a woman wearing a mask and plastic gloves in the swimming pool.”

“I'm such a germaphobe so I think I would have taken it pretty hard,” she considers what her own response would be if UBS hypothetically hit  IRL. “I would probably have the hazmat for sure and adult diapers.” 

I ask Yamaguchi whether she thinks it’s more important to have a realistic or delusional approach to life. “If you're realistic, that often means pessimistic to me and if you're delusional, that's probably a positive thing, right?” It’s a no risk, no reward world after all. 

Hello, Limerence is available to purchase now.