What It’s Like To Finally Love Without Rules

I love them. It’s uncanny and palpable. I love her smile when she wakes up in the morning and says good morning.

I love when he walks over to say good morning, walking to take the dog out. 

I love the quiet with them; I’ve never really been able to enjoy the quiet. 

I love when she stares at me while I’m sleeping and she doesn’t know that I’m watching back. I love when he wraps his leg under mine when we are sleeping. I love that we can talk for hours. I love them both. I love meeting their beautiful daughter and her beautiful baby boy. 

I love the intimacy, the sex, the emotional security, the details, and the flow of everyday life. I love when she plans dinners and hugs me like she’s holding me for the first time. 

I know all these can get clouded by what I don’t love. You see, I waited for this love. I waited patiently for these two. These amazing people. The world had to flip the script on my life for this moment to appear.

I don’t love it all; don’t get me wrong, I’m pragmatic. I don’t love all the anxiety. I don’t love not being able to read one’s mind. Even the things I don’t love about them, I love. 

I know that this love has an expiration because the future is inevitably unpredictable. It’s love; I could wake up every day and never look back. I could make that commitment today. Do we even know the future? 

Expirations. It’s the very thing that makes us focus; it’s the action that creates other actions. It’s checking your watch in a meeting and realizing you are late for another meeting. We are a world of expirations. 

It loves without rules, living life in color. If you spent 24 hours and broke down every moment and every emotion one could feel in a day, what would that look like? What moment would be the best? What moment would be the worst? What if today, your time here on this planet expired at midnight? What would your day look like? What is the perfect moment? 

I’ve known many versions of love in my life—love with conditions, love with lust, love with ultimatums, and love without choice. I’ve never known what love looked like when there weren’t any rules… until now. 

What if you could have all of those moments? What if you could have every perfect moment, but it would expire? Would you still love it? 

It’s funny; it took me 32 years to learn that is precisely what you decide it is for you. It’s not a storybook; it’s not a fence that’s white or the most prominent house in the neighborhood. It’s going to the grocery store and giving the world a little PDA. It’s breakfast on your birthday with the best company. It’s understanding and unyielding. They’ve taught me to love again and that I can do it. I didn’t want to. You see, there was a room with lights, but it was dark. They turned on this lamp, and there was no more incredible feeling. 

My expiration is unknown; we are meant not to know the future, even though we try. I chose to love; I chose the smile in the morning for whatever time life allows me. I chose Sunday dinner and walked in the park. Because expiration dates aren’t meant to be a judge, they are meant to tell us that time is fleeting and loving out loud is our purpose. 

Let’s love without the rules and erase the clock, remembering that love is what we make it.