you are in love

I’ve become obsessed with the idea of love — how to show it, how to receive it, how to feel it. How to know when you’re in it.

Answering the first two questions is easy. It’s shown by offering extra legroom and picking up chocolate chip cookies as a surprise and laughing at the other person’s jokes, even when they wouldn’t warrant that level of volume were they coming from anyone else. It’s shown through care in a conversation and consistent efforts to make a person smile. It’s received with a hug and a fresh bowl of pasta and an increase in oxytocin. You can bear witness to acts of love.

Through experience is the only way to know how it feels.

It’s felt in the way contact settles your nerves, your breaths slowing as their voice finally reaches your ear and your muscles relaxing when their arms hold your body against their chest, as if your system was only shaking to draw them closer. It’s felt in the realization that no embrace will bring you close enough, that no matter how tightly you intertwine your legs you’ll still find ways to inch closer. It’s felt when your eyes soften to reflect theirs as their lips curl back into a smile and it’s felt when your heart cracks if their expression falters — it’s felt in the understanding that their happiness has become equivalent to your own. It’s felt every time they kiss your forehead or trail their fingers gently over your skin, but it’s also felt in how tightly they hold you in their hands, as if your life depends on their not letting go. It’s felt as time continues to turn yet ceases to matter.

It’s felt in the ways you know them.

Love is a practice learned between two people, but I think being in love is contentment. Sometimes it feels like you were drowning before and they’re the air you needed to breathe. Perhaps those two thoughts contradict, but I can’t describe it in any other way.

All I know is that I experienced it for the first time with him.