Romanticizing Love

⛅️

He came as if he had stepped out of a fairytale.

He came like the first warm sunlight after a heavy downpour.

He came as the missing piece of a puzzle I had spent years searching for.

He arrived gently, like a breeze slipping through an open window, and as swiftly as lightning, he made a home in the quiet corners of my heart.

But......,

I did not know that lightning always carries thunder behind it.

I did not notice that the gentle breeze was gathering a storm beyond the horizon.

I did not realize I was a fragile little flower, standing bravely against a wind that was already too strong for me.

I did not know that solving the puzzle would reveal a picture I would never want to see.

And I never imagined that the breeze I welcomed so easily could grow into a storm powerful enough to uproot everything I had carefully planted within myself.

Perhaps that is the cruel thing about storms. They never introduce themselves as disasters.

They arrive dressed as sunlight. As comfort. As laughter. As home. 

And that’show love knocked on my door.

It arrived as an answer to prayers I never spoke aloud. It arrived like every birthday candle lit at once, carrying every wish I had ever made.

It was so sweet that I forgot there had always been a sour taste hidden in my mangoes.

Then, when everything finally reached its breaking point, the breeze, the sunlight, and the dreams I had wrapped around them came crashing through every locked door inside me.

That is why I once screamed that love is betrayal.

That is why I struggled to believe in love again.

That is why I searched for answers in books, in songs, in strangers, and across the endless corners of the internet.

It took me a long time to understand that love was never merely a feeling.

Love teaches you the art of waiting for a message that may never come. It teaches you how to make room for another person inside a life that once belonged only to you.
  

It teaches patience when every part of you is desperate for certainty.

And then, when you least expect it, it teaches you the hardest lesson of all; the art of letting go.

Somewhere in that process, love takes away your resentment. It loosens your grip on old wounds. It softens the sharp edges of your pride. It teaches forgiveness, even when your heart still aches. And eventually, it teaches you the art of moving on.

But if I am being honest, when it comes to love, I am a terrible student.

What is love, really?

A beautiful feeling.

A terrifying feeling.

A strange kind of madness that convinces you to place pieces of your heart into someone else's hands and trust that they will be careful with them.

Maybe love is also the search for a future.

A future where you can spend your ordinary days beside someone.

A future where loneliness no longer feels so frightening.

And perhaps that is what scared me most.

Not the falling,

Not the loving,

But the leaving.

I am afraid of the ordinary days that come after. The days when their name becomes a memory. The days when your hand reaches for someone who is no longer there. The days when your heart must learn a life it never wanted to live.

Yet perhaps that is the nature of life itself.

One day, every person we love will leave us, or we will leave them.

Every story through distance, time, circumstance, or death ; eventually arrives at a goodbye.

Because despite knowing how every story ends, we still choose to open the door.

We still choose to trust.

We still choose to love.

And perhaps that is the bravest thing a human heart can do.

So if love finds me again love and onlylove, I will open my heart once more. Because maybe, this time, at the end of the rain, there will be a rainbow waiting for me instead of a storm.