Loving him feels like coming home, and at the same time, taking flight.
& I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Hey you. It’s 4:22 am.
I met my fiancé over three years ago. At the time, it was pure coincidence. I was in an "open" state of romantic availability. I have always been a lover. It's easy for me to trust and to surrender. Even easier to let another person's love wash over me. Love means different things to different people, but here I'm referring to both platonic and romantic love. I'm a sucker for all of it. Which is also why, for a time, I thought I was pansexual. But that’s a rabbit hole for another day—because maybe it’s wrong to say I wasn’t pansexual. I was. I had to be. Everything and every relationship—however short-lived in that phase—was real.
I even sat my parents down on their bed and came out to them as queer. That’s a story for another day, too, because their response was a mix of love, concern, and curiosity. They accepted me, but they also had questions, questions I wasn’t always prepared to answer. For someone who took pride in being (hyper) independent, I sure wasn’t great at being alone. So it's only fair that my human came to me when I had finally decided that I didn’t want to hop from relationship to relationship. When I needed a cool-off period.
It seems like a great irony now, truthfully, because I’ve chosen a lifelong partner. It took me 1.5 years of being with him to know he’s the one I want to marry. He’s the guy who will be a silent partner to my garden-mom era. The guy I’m going to trek the Himalayas with and go snorkeling with and calculate grocery budgets with. He’s the guy who’ll hear me snore at 10 PM and wake up to my mantra meditations at 6 AM. And I get to be his queen and kitten. I get to make sure he’s never near bell peppers and papayas. Be his hype-girl and his comfy cushion. The organizer of all his funky ties & printed shirts. We’re both pretty great at keeping stuff in order but I just know it’ll become my thing. Just like I already know he’ll be the one making the itineraries for our travels.
I’m also blessed our families get along. I’m even more blessed to have a home in most states of India. It means if we want, we can spend a quarter of each year in a different weather climate and move through life independently—free souls experiencing the vast, lived earthly experience.
It’s funny, the things you start to notice when you choose forever. You think about how your partner looks when they’re reading, the way their brows furrow in deep concentration. You notice the tiny habits—the way they tap their fingers when thinking, how they absentmindedly stroke your hair when you’re sitting beside them. These things become holy, small relics of intimacy that you tuck away for a rainy day.
I often think about the person I was before we met. She was restless, always seeking, always wondering if love had a finish line, an ultimate destination. I thought I needed to be everything at once—bold and soft, independent and attached, free and yet rooted. I didn’t know then that love isn’t about fitting into some mold. It’s about being seen, truly seen, and held exactly as you are.
My partner does that for me. He doesn’t try to fix my overthinking; he just listens. He doesn’t need me to be anything other than what I am in the moment. And that, in itself, is a miracle.
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I love writing to you every Wednesday. It has become a nourishing part of my life, something I deeply cherish. It makes me so happy to receive your replies—whether through emails, comments, or DMs. So, here’s my question to you:
What does love look like to you?
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I love you,
See you next Wednesday! 🧡
Mohika,you have a lifetime of Felicity ahead of you. I've chosen that word because 'happiness' is too facile,though I hope a lot of happiness is in there too. Felicity means something more grounded and steady,in fact very like what you're describing,or a rather glam jazzed up version,lol! I'm joking a little,Felicity means (you are good with words you can look it up) it means a kind of quiet steady underlying contentment and that sounds dull and ever since my 1960s childhood all our cultural influences have promoted the exact opposite and encouraged popular thought to despise and reject Felicity as dull and boring and unadventurous and closed in. In fact the opposite is true. Drugs and alcohol seem to close a lot of people down early after a brief shooting star life. I've had a life of Felicity but I'm very aware that in my person I'm not a good promoter of it,I could be The Little Mermaid,lol again,no one wants to think I can be happy and content because no one who looks like that or doesnt have that or that,well that's a loser,how can a loser be happy. It should be illegal for a loser to be happy. It probably is! So enjoying Felicity is double edged,it's much harder to present,as one might say,than a "party lifestyle". So maybe you can have occasional parties to add some glitz to the mix. (I do ramble on). Lastly in pre 20th century literature people often had passionately affectionate relationships with others of their same sex and were uninhibited about expressing their love for each in embracing and kissing. Some 19thC classic novels are really embarrassing to a 20thC mindset retrained to see such stuff as gay/sexual. Gets the kids in class giggling! But even such extreme affection didn't mean sexual as such. I think if you love a PERSON,it's them you love,their inner being,and I now see that all true friendships have to be based on love for that other person,"quite liking" or "convenient to go around with" just doesnt work and soon dies. So due to the late 20th into 21st C media pervasive culture you thought maybe you were a bit "gay" but you weren't but you loved people because that's in your nature and I'm so happy that you had wise and sensible parents who I'm guessing thought along the lines of what I'm saying and gave you freedom to sort it out for yourself. Mohika,you could say all this in one pithy sentence!
this is so good to hear Mohika. This is what real love does -- makes you at ease.
Happy for you two :)