A slow love.

I used to think that love had to be fast. Not fast like quick. But fast like you’re gasping for breath at the intensity of it. Like you’re living in a cartoon and you’ve stepped off the edge of a cliff and you’re waiting for your body to catch up and realise that you’ve left solid ground; like your heart might look down at any moment and realise that there is nothing holding it together except this whirlwind of a feeling. I used to write poetry about wanting a love that was furious, striking through me like lightning or a hurricane shaking me to my core. I used to write lines of poetry like:

i want a love that looks at me and says
i am going to consume you alive.
i want a love that looks at me and says
how did i live without you?
and if it ends, i want a love that looks at me
and says, it was worth it, for a moment
i could feel every single bone in my body
and god, it was worth it.

When I met Scott, I found him infuriating and intoxicating all at the same time. He was like a wounded animal that needed to be coaxed out of his shell, so private and so stoic, I had no idea what he was thinking so much of the time. We were dating for six months before we even had the conversation about being a couple and it would be another six months before he felt comfortable putting a label on us. It was another few months after that when I finally met anyone in his life. But in hindsight, falling in love with him in such a slow, careful and measured way was as glorious as it was frustrating. Looking back, without the anxiety-riddled see-saw of the present wondering if he even liked me, we got to know eachother intricately before we had to share any of ourselves with anyone else in our lives. For a long time, our relationship and the people we were when we were together, was purely ours and ours alone. Now, I can almost feel our love in my hands and it is lustrous; slipping around my fingers like silk, thick and heavy, oozing like honey.

I was 25 when we first met and I was so sure that love had to make you inseparable. Our love changed every perception of love that I had. Any notion of a fairytale romance where you’re swept off your feet and everything is perfectly lovely, was abandoned. As with most things in our lives, even now, we come together from different perspectives, sometimes they are similar, or even parallel but they’ve never the same. When we met (and for a long time after), he was unsure he even believed in love. As I was writing lines of poetry about wanting to be consumed alive by it…

last night you asked
me what love is,
and i wanted to tell
you that it’s this.
it’s us. it’s this quiet
moment where we feel
safe and sound.
it’s when you can be
anywhere in the world,
but still at home.
it isn’t perfect and darling,
it’s definitely not easy.
but it’s this.
it’s finding your hand in
a crowd, finding your arms
in the middle of the night,
struggling for air but finding
your lips.
it’s a seed that buries itself
deep within your chest,
roots spreading into your veins
and blossoming into your throat,
so that every word is thick with love.
last night you asked
me what love is,
and darling, it’s this.

and this is how love starts

From our relationship, I’ve discovered that a slow burning, honest love is 800 times better than a romantic, forest fire type love than will burn and consume you. I’ve discovered certainty. I’ve found what it means to look beside you and know that person is not going anywhere. I’ve found what it means to know someone intricately. I look at him and know that we will spend our lives together. I look for him in the quietest moments, his chest in the night, his hand in a crowd. Our love together has been built on a thousand small moments where he has just been there and present, scary hospital appointments where it was just a little less terrifying because he was by my side, a dinner to celebrate not-bad results, championing my plans to pursue writing as a freelancer.

The morphing and inseparability-ness of a relationship that I thought was love, real love, I thought was missing for us for a long time. Until one afternoon when I had a nap. I was doing my masters degree, freelancing as a writer and working in a restaurant in Shoreditch, London and I had worked the closing shift in the restaurant the night before. I had finished work at almost 4am, got home just before 5am and fell into bed. I woke up at my normal time of about 8.30/9am, but of course was absolutely shattered from only a few hours of sleep. So, around midday I crashed out again. I woke up to multiple messages from Scott and my sister who had worked themselves into hysteria together worrying about such an out-of-character disappearance. I realised that although we weren’t inseparable physically, we were always talking, sharing, communicating.

There are times he makes me proper belly laugh and he’ll stop and stare at me and say things like: I could live on the way it makes me feel to see you happy. And isn’t that the kind of love that we all deserve? The type of love that is topped up with soul joy just because you are. The supportive, slow love that cheers for you, that props you up when you’re feeling rubbish and tells you that you can achieve absolutely anything that you set your mind to.

It’s obviously still a real-world love, created by two people coming together with their own minds, views and actions. And oh, he is still all kinds of frustrating sometimes. He has so many walls but I feel like I’m finally inside the tower with him, until he’s stressed, and then I get kicked out and have to wait for him to climb down and open the door.

In April, it will have been five years since we first met. For two people who are quite predictable, our spontaneous 9pm meeting at the BFI Bar on London’s Southbank for our first date still surprises us both. How far we have both come in the last four and a half years, how far we will go in the next four and a half years.

So yes, I am here for the slow love. The slow, wandering kind of love created from a life woven together. I am so grateful for Scott, for the light he brings to my life and the slow love we’ve built together.