Learning about love
Inertia — 209
I’ve never been one to talk about love. But this is inertia, and it’s the first time I’ve felt the wheels turn in the right direction for an incredibly long time.
Today’s our first anniversary, and I’d sum it up as a year of feeling like I can have nothing but fun with love. All the years felt like collecting broken relationships as nice-looking fragments that only cut you when you held them too tightly. I kept some of them in my pockets for a while, but their edges always dulled with time—though never quite smooth enough to forget how they drew blood.
But this time, it’s like learning to breathe underwater.
This time, it didn’t announce itself with fireworks or a desperate promise. It came through like morning light through the curtains on a Sunday in May. Steady. Unhurried. Aligned. At a time I had forgotten this kind of thing could exist.
I spotted the difference in the quiet moments: the shoulders against each other on the sofa. The unconscious rhythm of breathing syncing in sleep. The artistic and unnecessary touches to the coffees I won’t forget. Each little thing has been a current carrying things forward, day after day. No need for a dramatic rescue or any desperate clinging—it’s just two people waking up and choosing each other in a thousand tiny ways.
It’s building something sturdy. Not perfect—never that—but honest. A shelter from conversations stretching past midnight, of disagreements that don’t leave scars, of silences comfortable enough to rest in. It’s making maturity feel like freedom.
I saw love as a fever or affliction you just endure, but I was wrong about that. It’s more like a language you learn. Give it time and effort, and eventually, it can feel so intuitive that you forget you once struggled to speak it. Instead, you just wake up every day, and you choose it. You embrace it and enjoy the fluency.
A year ago, I couldn’t have said this. But I’m learning that the vulnerability of love gives you the best kind of strength. It’s simpler and more complex than I imagined. But I’m no longer afraid to say it out loud.