Love in the Ordinary

There are days when I forget that I love things. When grief sits heavy on my chest like a sleeping animal I’m afraid to move, and everything good feels just slightly out of reach. It’s like living behind glass. I can see the world, but I can’t quite feel it. Beauty loses its color; even joy feels like something that used to belong to me but doesn’t anymore. There are mornings when the light leaks through the blinds, and instead of warmth, it feels like exposure. When even the act of existing feels like too much… too bright, too loud, too alive. But then, somehow, the smallest thing cracks the gray open, the hiss of the coffee maker, the way the air smells right before rain, a song that hits the ache in my chest just right. A stranger’s kindness. The ghost of laughter I didn’t realize I still had in me. Little things that feel like proof that maybe love hasn’t left, it’s just sleeping somewhere inside me, waiting for a reason to wake up.

I love morning light spilling through half-closed blinds, the kind that makes dust look holy, like even the smallest remnants of life are worthy of worship. There’s something sacred in the way the day begins, soft and forgiving, before the noise sets in. I love the first sip of coffee that almost burns, that tiny sting that reminds me I’m still here, still capable of feeling something. I love songs that wreck me in the best way… the ones that unravel me slow, one lyric at a time, until I’m sitting still with my eyes closed, breathing through the ache of finally being understood. I love when someone sends me a song that reminds them of me, it feels like being seen in a language beyond words. There’s something so vulnerable about it, knowing that somewhere, in the middle of a melody, I crossed their mind. I’ll play it over and over, trying to hear what they heard… which lyric, which note, which ache made them think of me. For a few minutes, I get to exist inside someone else’s feeling of me, carried by sound, by heartbeat, by everything they couldn’t say out loud. I love when laughter catches me off guard, especially when it breaks through the quiet like steam through a crack, those moments when the heaviness lifts just long enough for joy to sneak in. I love the way rain sounds against the window when I have nowhere to be, each drop like a heartbeat syncing me back to the rhythm of something bigger. I love the ache of nostalgia… how it pulls at the edges of my chest and whispers, you’ve lived. You’ve loved hard enough to miss things, long enough to ache for what’s gone. I love the smell of old books, the brittle pages that hold ghosts of other lives, and the weight of words that somehow outlast the people who wrote them. I love the feeling of air slipping between my fingers when the window’s rolled down… that wild, fleeting kind of freedom you can’t hold onto but reach for anyway. It reminds me that life is meant to be touched while it’s moving. I love the feeling of running my fingers through someone’s hair I love… the quiet intimacy of it, the way time seems to slow as my fingers trace through strands like I’m memorizing them. There’s something sacred in that small, wordless act… the gentleness of touch that says I’m here, you’re safe, you can rest now. The way closeness can feel like both comfort and confession. I love stories told by people who don’t realize how luminous they are, how their ordinary becomes holy in someone else’s ears. I love road trips at golden hour, windows down, hair tangled by the wind, the sky melting into gold and fire, that one song playing that makes everything, even the ache, even the missing, feel like belonging. I love that feeling that you’re exactly where you’re meant to be.

I love conversations that stretch until the sun starts to rise… the kind that blur time until it’s just two souls suspended in a quiet universe of honesty. The air between words feels softer then, like truth can finally breathe without flinching. I love the safety of being seen without shrinking, when someone looks at the messy, unfiltered parts of you and doesn’t reach for the exit. It’s rare, that kind of safety… like exhaling after years of holding your breath. I love handwritten notes, the way someone’s pen stumbles mid-thought, proof that their heart was moving faster than their hands. I love grocery store flowers, the ones slightly bruised but still reaching for light, because beauty doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth taking home. I love kindness that costs nothing, the kind offered with no expectation, like a small miracle disguised as an ordinary gesture. I love people who cry without apology, who let their heartbreak show because pretending doesn’t make it hurt less. I love the feeling of finding myself again after being lost… like catching my reflection and recognizing the girl who disappeared for a while. I love the smell of clean sheets and the soft crackle of a candle in a dark room, small comforts that make loneliness gentler. I love the weight of a cat settling into my lap, the quiet declaration of trust in a world that gives so many reasons not to. I love when my heart recognizes itself in someone else’s story, that sudden flicker of me too that makes the world feel less sharp. I love deep sighs that spill out the ache, making space for breath and softness again. I love déjà vu… that eerie, tender moment where my soul whispers, you’ve been here before. You survived this once. I love firsts… first kisses that taste like beginnings, first steps back into my own skin, first mornings where staying feels like choosing life all over again.

I love that healing isn’t linear… that it loops and folds and doubles back. That some days feel like progress and others like unraveling, and somehow both count as growth. I love that I get to begin again, and again, and again… that no matter how many times I fall apart, life keeps handing me another sunrise and saying, try once more. I love grief, not for the hollow it left but for the way it revealed the depth of love… how something can be gone and still pulse in every corner of my being. I love the moon and how it doesn’t compete with the sun... how it glows softer, steadier, content to light the dark instead of banishing it. I love the way it makes even the loneliest places look poetic... the way it's light finds rooftops, rivers, and the backs of tired shoulders walking home. I love that it rises no matter what kind of day came before, no matter how heavy or how hollow. I love it's patience, how it waits for the world to quiet before revealing it's beauty, how it doesn’t rush its becoming. I love that it's proof that there’s no shame in having phases. I love how looking at it feels like remembering... like all the versions of myself who once did the same, standing under its light, whispering secrets it'll never repeat.

I love the ocean for teaching me that depth isn’t danger, that surrender doesn’t mean drowning, that sometimes you have to let the tide pull what you were never meant to hold. I love writing, how it drags me back from the edge every time I start to believe I’ve reached the end. It’s the hand that finds mine in the dark, the quiet reminder that I’m still capable of translating ache into something that breathes. Writing is how I survive the things I can’t say out loud. It’s how I make sense of the mess… how I turn pain into prayer, chaos into language, heartbreak into something that almost sounds like grace. It’s the only place where I don’t have to hold back or make sense; I can bleed across a page and call it art. Sometimes I think the page knows me better than anyone, it has seen every version, every unraveling, every resurrection. I love how words can hold me when nothing else can, how they become a bridge back to myself. How they remind me that as long as I can still write about it, I haven’t completely lost my way.

I love the people who stay… the ones who weather every version of me without flinching, who don’t try to fix my storms but sit with me through them. The ones who keep showing up even when I go quiet, who see the exhaustion behind my distance and love me anyway. I love the ones who remember how to reach me when I forgot how to reach back. And strangely, I love the ones who didn’t stay, too… the ones who left when my story no longer fit theirs. They taught me about impermanence, about how some people are meant to be seasons, not lifetimes. They showed me what it means to let go without bitterness, to bless the exit instead of chasing it. Both kinds carved something true into me… a reminder that love’s value isn’t measured by duration but by depth, by the way it transforms you. Every person who’s ever touched my life has written their name in my becoming, even if they never meant to stay for the whole story. I love the versions of myself that refused to let go, even when letting go might’ve been easier… the ones who clung to hope with trembling hands, who stayed soft in a world that begged them to harden. I love that I keep believing there’s always something worth holding onto, even when my heart is heavy and my faith is paper-thin. Even when I can’t see it, my stubbornness is sacred… a quiet rebellion against despair. I love the parts of me that keep showing up to the hard days, that keep loving through disappointment, that keep choosing to stay alive inside a body that longs to disappear. That is the reason I’m still here, the parts that kept whispering not yet, even when the weight of it all said enough. I love my strength, not because it looks graceful, but because it doesn’t. Because I stay when I could have walked away, and in doing so, I’m carried to a version of myself who finally knows what it means to be free. I love the way time sandpapers sharp edges until they stop cutting when I remember. I love how love keeps shapeshifting… how it lingers in laughter, in memory, in the quiet corners where names still echo. I love that after everything… after loss, after darkness, after the breaking and the rebuilding… I still love things. That my heart, somehow, still chooses softness.

Because that, I think, is the quiet miracle of it all… that even after everything, love keeps finding its way back to me. It sneaks in through cracks I thought were sealed shut, showing up not as fireworks, but as flickers… a soft laugh, a steady breath, a moment that asks for nothing but presence. It doesn’t always roar; sometimes it hums low beneath the noise, steady and patient, waiting for me to remember it’s always been there. Love shows up in the ordinary… in dishes stacked in the sink, in a text that says made it home safe, in the way sunlight crawls up the walls at dawn like it’s been searching all night for a way in. It shows up in the fleeting… in the half-smile of a stranger, in a song that hits a scar I’ve learned to live with, in the quiet grace of things that never announce their meaning but somehow save me anyway. Maybe that’s all that really matters, not the grand gestures or the perfect endings, but the simple, stubborn truth that even after loss, after heartbreak, after everything that could’ve hardened me… I do still love things. And maybe that’s what healing really is…  not the absence of pain, but the willingness to keep reaching for beauty in spite of it.