Here’s what I know about love.
Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is pain. Love is suffering. Love is knocking on the door in the pouring rain, sobbing, and hoping against hope that the arms on the other side will enfold you and hold you close and tell you everything is going to be okay. Love is hurt. Love is betrayal. Love is calling and asking ‘where’s the money?’, knowing full well where it’s up his nose and down the drain and still hoping it’s not true anyway. Love is waiting. Waiting for them to call, waiting for them to show up. Waiting for them to tell the truth. Waiting for them to give to you what they have promised, waiting beyond all possible reasonable hope, waiting, waiting, waiting because what else is there to do.
Love is sunshine. Love is a surprise picnic on a shitty birthday. Love is an iced coffee with the grocery shopping, your favourite orange juice in the fridge and Tim Tams in the cupboard even when you’re the only person in the house who eats them.
Love is a hesitant, curious snuffle into the hand as you walk on the beach, or a glorious sprint through across the park, tongue lolling. Love is a warm body curled up on your feet, even in thirty degree weather.
Love is being called out on your shit. Love is having a fight and choosing to work through it because life without the other person is unthinkable. Love is mix tapes and playlists and ‘this song reminds me of you’.
Love is dreaming about someone for the first time.
Love is second guessing your gut, Love is someone’s actions not matching their intentions, or their words, or their energy. Love is ‘open your eyes’ in the heat of the moment. Love is a stolen glance from across the room. Love is a cheesy song, written straight from the heart.
Love is a thousand poems and songs and words and unselfconsciously sharing them, no matter how cringeworthy it might seem now.
Love is a hole in your chest it feels like a cannonball has gone through you. Love is not eating for days at a time because you’re not sure how you could have got it so terribly wrong,. Love is feeling embarrassed and ashamed of how you behaved, and wondering if everyone around you thinks you were an idiot.
Love is being taken for granted. Love is having your ‘no’ taken as a’yes’, in the worst possible way.
Love is the naive, vulnerable, curious exciting exploration of one another’s bodies; the surprised and delighted ‘oh’ when something feels good. The feeling of mingled arousal and achievement when you please the other person.
Love is having your boundaries pushed. It’s ‘do we really have to stop just because the condom broke?’ It’s having your head pushed down while you’re performing oral sex, no matter how many times you’ve said you hate that. It’s ‘just one more’ or ‘just a little bit longer’ or ‘I really want to do this’.
Love is sobbing for days because they left and you don’t know how you will ever be okay without them. It’s months later, realising you haven’t thought about them all day. It’s a year later, forgetting their phone number. And it’s a year after thet, when you can look back on them with gratitude and love, and wish them well.
Love is cutting you out with no explanation. Love is continuing to love that person anyway, wishing them nothing but the best. Love is realising that maybe the reasons they did it were as much about them as they were about you. Love is realising that your mere presence can cause people discomfort and shame and pain, and allowing them to walk away rather than trying to fix it.
Love is blame and shouting and insults.
Love is quiet drives in the car with the radio on, Love is uncomfortable silences. Love is silences so comfortable you wish they could go on forever.
Love is watching the slow rise and fall of a sleeping body. It’s smiling at the sound of noisy dreams, even if they’ve woken you up. Love is dealing with tantrums every time you leave the house, and choosing to go out again anyway. Love is trying to teach and learn and explain. Love is growing together.
Love is holding each other, firmly enough to remain connected, but lightly enough that both are free to move.
Love is hand on your thigh from the driver’s seat. Love is fish and chips in the car as the rain pelts down outside. Love is shelling a hundred prawns so the other person doesn’t have to. Love is a hug so firm you feel the other person is trying to absorb you by osmosis. Love is a hug like a solid brick wall, a wall that is warm and breathes and smells like Hugo Boss.
Love is laughing when you fall over on the rock pools, but reaching out a hand to help you up anyway. Love is doing a late night pickup so the other person is safe. Love is asking whether it’s love for someone else. Love is warm teardrops on your hands as they cry with you. Love is feeling them watch you from across the room.
Love is the soft slow swell of music rising up in you. It’s hands raised in the air because you don’t know how else to express it.
Love is debating politics safe in the knowledge that opinions won’t break the relationship. Love is joking and laughing and knowing the other person would die for you, if need be.
Love is desperately longing for kisses that never arrived. Love is years later wishing for the love that always went unrequited.
Love is a drunken confession, a hasty grope in the front seat of a car, an honest moment, Love is wanting that moment in the clear light of day, and being ignored. Love is choosing yourself, your happiness, your worthiness above what is being offered.
Love is watching a movie you hate because it’s the other person’s favourite. Love is apricot chicken and rice made with love, and eaten anyway. Love is reading a dozen books before bed and still asking for just one more. Love is marshmallow topped cupcakes. Love is jokes that aren’t funny, but serve as a kind of language, a short-hand for love.
Love is waiting to hear back. Love is hearing back but still not being sure what is being said. Love is first meetings, first kisses, first-everythings. Love is a ride in a hot air balloon. Love is the feeling of strong, almost-naked bodies around you, floating together. Love is wine and dumplings, it’s laksa and beer, it’s coffee and cake. Love is proof-reading job-applications, and sending good-luck emails and writing affirming post-it notes.
Love is choosing yourself. Love is putting yourself first. Love is sacrificing everything. Love is compromise. Love is unyielding. Love is soft. Love is giving up independence. Love is allowing your own life. Love is picking up the phone even when you really don’t want to. Love is going to a party on an anxious day. Love is understanding not being able to leave the house. Love is doing the dishes. Love is allowing it to be okay to cancel plans. Love is making plans what aren’t too much in the first place. Love is taking photos. Love is sending photos. Love is unexpected gifts.
Love is laying under the night sky and looking up at the stars.
Love is loss. Love is pain. Love is suffering. Love is the sharp ripping stab of grief. Love is the overwhelming fear of losing someone. Love is being confused. Love is second-guessing. Love is faith.
Love is tentative, hesitant, shy. Love is brass bold, declaratory. Love is passion and fire, it is the everflowing river. It is the rooted tree and the whip crack of the wind. Love is sunshine. Love is rain. Love is soft weight and warmth on your belly.
This is what I know about love. Love is.