How Do People Fall In Love?
I keep trying to remember how we came to be.
How did we go from awkward hello’s and waiting for you to call to me not being able to fall asleep without you saying goodnight? How did we go from strangers to lovers to fitting together like destined to be puzzle pieces? Did we always fit so perfectly?
Maybe, I am just letting down the walls enough to feel it now. Maybe, just maybe, our lives and journeys twisted together to grow us into the pieces that fit like home now. I hope that’s how it happened, but it happened so fast I don’t think I’ll ever truly know.
It didn’t feel intentional; it wasn’t like I was trying to fall in love with the boy who walked into the coffee shop on that bright Thursday afternoon. There was no “meet cute” or “love at first sight” fairytale stuff. There was no slow-motion run into each other’s arms. It was innocent and organic and nothing I ever would have expected, in the very best of ways. I expected to meet people, not my person. It was normal, so normal.
How could something so nonchalant turn into me needing you like I need air in my lungs?
Isn’t it funny how the simplest things about a person can turn out to be your favorite things in the world?
Like how you start your mornings off perfectly slow, a sharp contrast to my racecar kickstart as soon as the first alarm sounds. How you grab my hand in the middle of the night and kiss me on the top of my head when you come to bed after me. Do you even know how perfect those moments are?
When did I become the kind of person who cherishes the little things? Like the way your face lights up when you talk about your passion. Or the way you have to say hi to every dog that we pass on our walks. How you care about your friends and family and call them often to check in. Those are the little mosaics of you that fill my soul.
I had never wanted to take the risk. I promised myself that I wouldn’t fall fast, and I would keep my guard up so I wouldn’t get hurt. But I haven’t gotten hurt, and I surely have fallen fast, and some days, it feels like the rug has been stolen out from under my feet. Other days, it feels like I am walking on air.
I guess both are rooted in the same feeling, that I just can’t place how we got here together and how my life got so rearranged. I keep trying to connect the dots to uncover how our stories got so intertwined that I don’t recognize myself without you. It’s the scariest and most invigorating feeling in the world: to dream of a life intertwined with the person you love.
How do people fall in love? Why is it simultaneously the easiest thing I’ve ever done and the hardest?
The loving part is easy. I could love you for the rest of my life if we could stay in our bubble. But we can’t because storms sometimes rage outside, and the thunder and lightning threaten us if we venture there. However, the life we want demands that we do. There is an oasis in your blue eyes, though, and it is that haven that I decide to focus on, the truth I choose to root myself in.
The outside can hurt us, and we can hurt each other; that’s the risk we took in falling. I don’t know how or when, but I know that now we’re here, anchored to each other in the hope we find here, choosing to love and choosing to go on the adventure of this life together.
Maybe, I don’t need to know how we got here. Maybe, the dots are meant to be disconnected. I keep trying to figure out how we got here so I can figure out where to go. But I never knew where to go when our story started, and we still arrived.
Maybe, that is the real risk. Maybe, falling in love isn’t a one-time thing, but head-first falling over and over and over again, in ways you can’t explain in your mind, but in ways you know are true in your heart.