/lit/ - Literature

>>14207488
Lately, I feel a soft and steady warmth filling my body.

I feel this way because I am beginning to understand what it means to truly love and to be loved. When I come here to these threads I often see two types of love-based posts. The first is dark and brooding, written by those who write about its unattainability and the illusory nature of love, those frustrated by self-fulfilling prophecies, their own limitations, or the bad people they encounter. The other is the seraph who lifts up the woman in question and adorns her with accolades and sunlight until she is an alien Venus on a far away shrine in the sky, no longer touchable, no longer human, only beheld. They are baroque on their contrasts, and both disconnected from reality, I believe. I used to think that way.

What I’ve learned is that the real thing is so much calmer than that, so much sturdier, so much more endearing. It’s made of flannel shirts and cold New England winter nights, of notifications which lead to coffee cups and museum visits. It’s pauses in conversations while eating when eyes meet, its car rides, and time, and slow progress, of noticing small things about her, and her about me. For without these subtle items I do not know her, and she does not know me. Without them I am like any other of 1,000 handsome men in the world to her, and she is like any other 1,000 beautiful women in the world to me. It’s knowing where she comes from and how she thinks, how her inner world functions and the myriad things I find exploring it. It’s about her doing the same for me, and both of us listening to the other without ourselves to get in the way. To listen with only the intention of listening is how one first begins to build love. If I can meet her where she is, then I am truly there for her, and her for me. And in this way I find myself embraced in this willingness to be vulnerable, to listen and tell stories, that I have found in nobody else. It is this quiet thing she has in her which says “I am here and I see you” and I want to give it back for her tenfold for all he world to see. It makes me melt.

And nothing is perfect, we have our quarrels but it’s alright because we know what lies there beneath them. This past week she said to me “we’re a good team, you and I.” And I said “yeah, we really are.” I’ve never been on a team before. When I was young, I found myself shaking quite often. I had a tremor, I was abused by my family. I did not touch, I did not trust, but when I am with her I do not shake. I only glow, and I never knew I was capable of that.

Thank you, I love you so much.