love

On you, on this love, on this fever, on distance.

I live in a perpetually fevered state. 

From the way that I walk to the way that I dance to the way that I practice yoga to the way that I engage (or disengage) others in conversation, I handle all areas of my life with a very specific intensity. I often arrive at my destinations panting, the heat from my cells radiating outward and increasing the temperature in the room ever so slightly. When I interact with people, I either make zero eye contact or lock eyes with such ferocity that it just makes all parties uncomfortable - there is no middle ground. 

I make swift, yet firm decisions about places to eat, about life choices to pursue, about people with whom I want to surround myself. I do nothing casually. Even when I write, I either completely unfold all of my truth, all of myself into my words, or I say nothing substantive, choosing to instead hide behind carefully crafted bullshit masquerading as prose. 

And when I love - god, when I love. It is consuming. I’ve always found it difficult to mask my feelings, any of my feelings, and when I love, most of all, it’s so obviously apparent. My love pours out of me, it floods my conversations; I find myself wading through it, trying not to drown in it. This love, this overwhelming, encompassing, ubiquitous love. 

It’s no secret that I’m in a long-distance, open relationship. And to be perfectly honest, on a day-to-day basis, it’s not even that difficult to maintain. We speak everyday. We live our own lives. But it’s when I see him, wake up next to him with our limbs tangled together, spend afternoons doing nothing except merely breathing in each other’s air, and unceremoniously soon after have to say goodbye - everything stops and suspends for a while. An ill-constructed dam has popped up to bar my love.

I swell, I burst. I am overtaken with a desire to seek warmth and affection, to quell this fever, to sate the urge to have my love met. 

It’s been 2 years of this distance, and I make no apologies for the attempts that I’ve made to connect with others, to fill the space that’s been left behind. Because when I think about him and I think about us, I know that this is it, this is my forever.

Whether my love leaks out of me is of little consequence. Not when there is so much of it to offer. 

"I just love you."

Like most relationships, my boyfriend and I had some growing pains in the beginning. Between Year 2 and Year 4 in particular, we would alternate back and forth between being madly in love and madly at each other’s throats. We would have loud, public fights - both in front of our closest friends, as well as complete strangers - over the most ridiculous shit, like the merits of Scientology or the rules of Scrabble. Our relationship was a storm that we weathered from month-to-month. 

During our senior year of college, the stress of being in a long-term relationship intensified as we were faced with the impending reality of the real-world and what it would mean for the future of “us.” He stayed behind an extra year while I prepared myself for potential joblessness, and I was constantly on edge, possessive of all of his time, fearful that it was running out. The slightest comment would instigate a fight, and I honestly found myself counting down until the end. 

And then there was a shift. At some point in the middle of one particular fight, probably over something unimportant and obscure, he told me that he “just loved me.” And it was so ridiculous and unexpected, an excuse I couldn’t argue with, and we just looked at each other and laughed and the fight was over. Ever since then, it’s been our “out” during fights, which nowadays are rare and far between anyway.

Having an “out” for fights transformed our relationship. Holding onto anger is so exhausting, a tax on one’s emotions, and saying, “I just love you,” or something similar to cut the tension in the middle of a fight has allowed us to always skip to the end - the calm after the storm. More often than not our fights have been over the most trivial shit anyway, usually the consequence of one of us demanding to be right. But “being right” is never worth the argument, and having an “out” has been a great escape route from pointless arguments that aren’t worth the energy. Relationships already require a certain amount of energy and emotional investment to sustain long-term, without the added heaviness and resentment from fights. 

I love Chris. I have loved him without pause for the last 5.5 years. And some may question how it’s possible to be in an open relationship with someone I purport to love so much, but it’s because I have and will always choose him over everything else. I choose him over other men, over other sexual or intimate experiences, over my own anger, and over my own pride. 

And I know he chooses me too. 

I have a boyfriend who, at least once a month, calls and tells me that he’s been thinking about how awesome I am, and then proceeds to rattle off all the reasons why I’m awesome. Who, with my help, has invented dozens of secret ways to tell me he loves me. 

He is also the person who flat out tells me when I’m being a bitch (because no seriously, I’m kind of a bitch - offensive strings of words come out of my mouth frequently), and challenges me to be healthier, friendlier and fitter. 

I just don’t think it’s possible that anyone has loved the way that we have.