love is a verb

not just a feeling.

I lay by his side, a space in between us but our hands still interlinked. He breathes deeply and steadily, and even in his sleep: he gently squeezes my hand. My eyelids are heavy, and there is a wave of peace that wraps us warmly like a blanket. The second I close my eyes, I hear the chirp of the birds outside.

It’s almost morning. I look outside and see the pitch black night slowly turning to its shade of morning blue, and suddenly, I’m where I was almost one year ago. The sky is a time capsule.

I remember laying on this same bed alone; except we were only connected through our phones. I remember the frustration when I messaged him, when I was done walking on eggshells. Done pretending our love didn’t exist; not that we did it out of choice. We carried feelings we had no business carrying, quietly and carefully, like something fragile we weren’t allowed to set down.

I thought to myself: you might know heartbreak but you don’t know frustration. You don’t know the slow release of panic that sets in when you realize the circumstances make your love near impossible. Heartbreak has an end point. Yearning doesn’t. It is not dramatic, not like the movies. It is quieter and more cruel than that: waking up every morning determined to hold yourself together, only to come undone by nightfall. Rinse. Repeat.

Spending days contemplating how love so strong should not feel like a lump in my throat. Certainly, it deserves more. And the frustration that takes root in your heart is real.

But somewhere in the middle of all of it, there was a sentence. A few words, simply said, that rewired everything I thought I knew about love.

We’ll figure it out.

I have turned those words over in my hands so many times since. Four words that were really a decision. Four words that said: I am not going anywhere. And suddenly, the impossible felt like just another problem to solve, together.

Because once you yearn enough, you’ll realize your feelings alone are not enough to be with someone. And that is exactly what led us to be here, wrapped in our blanket of safety. Choice.

Because past the soul crushing yearning, there’ll be a day that you can’t hear “right person, wrong time” one more time. You’ll look at your own circumstances and find places — any place — to take back control, in order to really be with someone. You’ll be able to look at someone for who they are and put your chest into it when you say: I choose to be with you. Even when the circumstances weigh so heavily on your body that you feel it in your bones, you will still wake up and go to sleep with one sentiment in your heart. This love is so worth it. You will keep choosing, not because it is easy, but because the alternative is unthinkable. Because peace is worth the fight.

Love is a choice. A verb. It involves action. It involves reflection. It involves change. It involves everything that the movies don’t show you behind the scenes.

But how wonderful it is.

I’m tugged back into the present moment.

He pulls me gently towards him, holds my head as I bury my face in his chest. Half-asleep, he brushes the hair from my forehead and places the gentlest kiss there before he stills again. There has never been a moment where I have felt more loved.

Outside, the sky has fully turned: that deep blue softening now into the first grey light of morning. My heart pulls at me. The yearning still exists, but it has found a home in the safety of choice.

That, I believe, is love.