Pushing Buttons

Accepting this love has been one of the hardest journeys of my life, even though it might not seem like it to an external audience. Everything hit me at once, a tsunami of blows landing one, after another, and then another. I didn't get a break, and then life hit me with you-

the biggest hit of them all.

I mean, was I blind? Or just stupid? Massively naive to think I was just wandering through life with no certain course, not wandering towards something or someone in particular. Just another person on the street walk, wondering what the next day will bring.

I always thought people were softening the blow when they told me that love would find me when I least expected it. I thought it was a joke they tell heartbroken girls, to calm them down and return to some semblance of an equilibrium. Get over it/he never liked you anyway/plenty of fish in the sea.

What I didn't expect was love to find me in the rays of a warm, sunny day in the twilight of summer. I didn't expect love to find me in the dark of my worst days, holding out a hand to help me back to my feet. I didn't expect love to find me in the corner of the bar, nursing a drink and a bad head cold. I didn't expect love.

I didn't expect you. And I didn't anticipate the rest; the insanity that seems to keep building and adding new layers to my increasingly confused mind. Every little puzzle piece that falls into place and makes a little too much sense. Every memory. Every time we touched and I pretended that it didn't mean anything, because that was it and that was that, it's just life wrapped up in a shiny coat. Love wrapped up in the shape of someone unknown, yet so familiar.

It baffles me. I hope to figure the rest out somewhat soon. Maybe we can put the jigsaw back together, together?

But the more I grow to understand, the sides of you that I'm lucky enough for you to unravel and unveil to me, the less fear I feel. It's less like a bus and more like a warm bath, encouraging me to step in and sink beneath. I don't need to have every piece of the puzzle to know what the picture is supposed to be, and it looks a lot like you and me.

Even those parts of you that you maybe think I don't like, I do, because they're parts of you. You can't have everything in life, and it would be crass of me to demand that the person I've been manifesting and craving fit into every single box I predetermined. It's enough to get my notice, as you slip into the cracks of my mind and emerge the other side; grinning, like you've just pulled off a particularly impressive party trick.

One of my favorite parts of loving someone is getting to know every way that they tick, how to press their buttons and quell their sorrows. I've heard enough from you to know that there's so much more below the surface that I have left to know and understand. And then there's the parts of life that shape and change us as we walk throughout, that will doubtlessly change the person you are now in the months and years to come.

All of this to say that, really, I'm not scared. Really, I'm not. Well, maybe just on the surface. Below, I'm much more of a mess and tangle of anxiety and excitement, wondering which of those buttons I'll get to push first.