I used to think love arrived
already named.

That someone would hand it to me like a language.
One others had learned in childhood while I was absent.

I thought love was duty.

Not warmth.
Not always kindness.

Just…
remaining.

I mistook proximity
for affection.

Silence
for safety.

Obligation
for care.

Then, I thought love was fireworks.

It was warm fuzzy and filled you up.

The films told me so.

The magazines agreed.

Love was supposed to lift you,
paint the world in impossible colours.

Make another person the answer to a question
you hadn’t asked.

So I searched for the feeling.

The wanting.

The ache.

I called longing love.

It wasn’t. It was adolescence wearing somebody else’s script.

Later, I thought love was safety.

A harbour.

A locked front door.

A place where nobody left.

There is safety in love.

But safety alone
isn’t love.

A prison can be safe.

So can silence.

So can never risking yourself
at all.

Then I met something that called itself love…

while leaving bruises.

Fear doesn’t speak love.

Manipulation doesn’t speak love.

Love has never once needed to threaten to be believed.

That lesson cost more than I wanted to pay.

Friendship taught me another dialect.

Love became standing beside someone
when they couldn’t stand alone.

Protecting.

Fighting.

Showing up.

Although, if I’m honest, I knew how to protect
everyone except myself.

Somewhere along the way
I became the shield.

Nobody asked whether shields
ever get tired.

Then I confused guilt
with devotion.

If someone loved me or thought they did,

moulding me to fit in places I didn’t belong

I believed I owed them,

That somehow their feelings became my responsibility.

Imagine carrying every heart like fragile glass.

Imagine believing your own hands
weren’t allowed to be empty.

It took years to realise that choosing works both ways.

Nobody had taught me that.

Love, one time, arrived like fire.

Beautiful.

But hungry.

Consuming.

Wild.

Harmful.

I believed, when the fire dimmed,

I wasn’t worthy.

So I fed it pieces of myself.

Until there wasn’t much left that looked like me.

Eventually I wondered

“Can two imperfect people stay at the table
long enough to understand one another?”

I came to understand that the answer is yes,

when each wants to choose the other.

When care is prioritised,

communication and trust fundamental.

There has been times when history spoke,

much louder than I did.

Fear answered first.

Old survival borrowed my voice.

But love, real love,

doesn’t ask for perfect.

It asks me to be accountable.

Those are different things.

Slowly I stopped believing love was made
of grand gestures.

Turns out love makes tea,

remembers how a person needs to just be.

Love notices ‘you’re quieter today’.

leaves breakfast ready because tomorrow morning will arrive.

Love is astonishingly ordinary.

That’s its miracle.

People talk about falling in love.

They rarely talk about remaining.

About the morning when the chemistry quietens,

the projections dissolve

and another human being stands in front of you

exactly as they are.

Not your fantasy.

Not your rescue.

Not your unfinished story.

Just…

them.

That is where true love lives.

Love is a choice.

But not one.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Not because it has to.

Because it wants to,

Love isn’t possession.

To love a person,

you cannot cage them, cages aren’t homes.

Freedom isn’t the opposite of love,

it is one of its conditions.

So now,

when people ask me what love is,

I don’t think of fireworks.

Or fairy tales.

Or longing.

Or fear.

I think of trust.

Respect.

Repair.

Listening.

Loyalty.

Consistency.

Choosing.

The courage to let another person
remain fully themselves

while I remain fully myself

and somehow,

between those two freedoms,

there is balance and meeting.

For years I wanted to be chosen.

I thought that was the whole story.

Now I know love is not simply being chosen.

anyone can pick a flower, but can they tend the garden?

It is becoming someone who can choose

without abandoning yourself.

Loving is leaving space for others to chose their own path and walking beside on your path.

Love is an honesty.

Love is mature, essential and leaves space for growth.

An embodiment of trust in both self and others.

Perhaps, after everything,

that is the first place

love was always trying to lead me.

~Stacie Amelia 2026