07/12/2023
What is love to you?
To me, It's trusting that the person you love wants to be there, that their love is both a choice and a feeling, and feeling safe and excited in the knowledge that you can make whatever kind of relationship you want together. Love is also 143 pounds of Mr. Rogers (the weight he reportedly stayed his entire adult life, which he thought was God's way of telling him he was loved).
Sometimes love is wanting to do things for someone that feel like obligations when you're asked to do them for someone else. It's shared T-shirts, playlists, and appetizers. Right now, I'm grappling with the fact that in these times, especially as a person who loves hard, love can sometimes make you feel like the folks who played music as the Titanic sank; it's gorgeous, selfless, and important, but it can be temporary and heart-wrenchingly sad at the same time. Love is also so much more.
Love is a space for refuge, for pain, and for growth. Love is like sinking into a warm bath at the end of an awful day. It’s being brave enough to give someone the parts of you that are messy, complicated, and not Instagram-perfect. It’s knowing that although they hold all the tools to break your heart, they’ll build you up instead.
Love is a trust I place in someone. Love is a space for refuge, for pain, and for growth. Love is walking through a world of cold, dead pain and knowing there are human hearts beating somewhere and that one of them beats for me, and then my heart flutters like a dream come true.
Love is picking me up off the ground when I am at my lowest but also being the rock that my partner needs when she's vulnerable.
Fighting for each other every single day, for every ounce of ground, for every kiss, smile, and through all the tears. Not wanting to run away but run closer to each other.
This is what love means to me.
What does love mean to you? Please comment below.