A gift
To find love at all was an unexpected gift. At the dusk of my twenties, I certainly didn’t anticipate running into it. I hadn’t exactly given up nor did I consider myself unfit for love but the years that lay behind me hadn’t exactly inspired much confidence. There had been a lot of ‘right person at the wrong time’ or ‘wrong person at the right time’. I had been destructive and sometimes cruel in my early twenties, jumping from one person to the other, not leaving people better than I’d found them. Often, the beginnings were carefree and intense. Then something would happen, I’d grow scared of getting hurt and I would distance myself, ghost and disappear. And when I didn’t follow this pattern, there was pain and a rough ending, often leaving me unable to accept and move on. Afterwards, I’d fill the hole left by a previous heartbreak by latching onto a new person, someone I’d often meet through the melancholy-filled stories or poems I’d written about her predecessor. These cynical patterns were stubborn, they persisted deep into my twenties despite attempts to steer myself towards a more healthy and caring way of dating. I wasn’t fully there yet in February 2020, instead thinking I’d open myself for something casual, low intensity, wanting to at least get that right, proving a point to myself that I could manage.
When you have intentions like that, life likes to joke around. That first casual encounter blossomed into a comfortable and safe relationship, with shared friends, vacations, two cats and a mortgage. Nothing in my life has felt more overwhelming and fulfilling. I share a happiness with someone that I never thought possible to exist. Being with N. changed my perspective on love, on what it should feel like, what a relationship should be. Being with her changed me as a person, it soothed wounds I’d left festering but also allowed me to help her heal wounds of her own, it offered both of us a safe space to just be. I never thought about the intimacy of folding laundry together or the warmth we’d get from either of us stepping in for the other, until that intimacy and warmth was all around us. When she leaves for a weekend with friends or when I am driving her to the airport for a trip with work, I feel a part of myself detaching, staying with her instead. Our house feels empty and cold without her, I feel adrift, out of place, yearning for her return.
There were times when I didn’t think this would last. I know everything ends somehow, some day, but that’s different from feeling like you’re on borrowed time, like the end is creeping closer. I’d convinced myself that one day, she would wake up and feel as if I’d been holding her back, keeping her too close to the ground. I’d lay awake in the nights and mornings, thinking about that bubble of happiness popping like a balloon. And then she’d make a sound, roll against me, sigh happily and the thoughts would pass momentarily. It took some time before I realized we looked at each other with the same fear, just from opposite ends. Realizing this, knowing it, embracing it, it built the foundation for believing that someone chooses to stay with me every day, the same way I choose to stay with her.
My relationship with N. forces me to reflect on dating in the past, I can’t shy away from that responsibility. It’s attractive to imagine that this relationship works because so many others didn’t, because I learned so many lessons. I don’t think all of that pain was needed, I don’t think destruction has helped me be a better partner. I don’t see this relationship as redemption for pain caused outside of it, this isn’t the thing I do right to make up for all the wrongs. Looking back, there’s regret and remorse. There’s decisions I wouldn’t make again if I had the chance. That doesn’t mean much for the people involved and I wonder what good an apology years later would do. People move on, forgive, forget. Stirring up things from ten years ago feels more about calming my guilt than actually making amends.
I am left to question why this soft, tender and persistent love is so different from anything else, and why it found me when it did. We get chances and gifts even when we don’t fully deserve them, growing into them over time if we’re lucky. When I cradle her in my arms, right before I fall asleep, that feeling washes over me the most. How lucky to be able to love at all, how lucky to be loved so truly.
(Hi, I am writing on Substack these days, in English. Find me here: https://substack.com/lennartvn)














