I rarely fall in love. But when I do, it usually follows the same pattern.
After a few years of piecing myselves back together—diving deep into the existential wounds of my ancestral lines and resurfacing with reconciliations that would scare even Hades—I fall in love. On a random Tuesday afternoon.
I’m the kind of person who knows they’re falling in love before it happens. It’s in the way the corners of my mouth reaches for the sky when I hear their voice. It’s the craving for their skin before I’ve even tasted it. It’s the wondering—how would their hands feel on my back?
I am a tall, Pisces sun, Scorpio moon, Black femme whose mother and father wounds span the distance between Earth and Saturn. So when I fall, I fall from high and deep.
The last relationship I spoke about was significant in many ways. But maybe most of all because it was my first long(er)-term T4T love.
I wish everyone reading this gets to fall in love with someone who looks like them—at least once.
There is something special in gazing in the eyes of someone you don’t need to explain yourselves to.
Loving someone else is always, in part, loving a version of yourself. Love is a mirror. We fall in love with who we are when they are close to us. And that is why, perhaps, for folks who struggle with loving themselves, this newfound love can feel like the love they've spent a lifetime waiting for: their own.
With them, I felt like a teenager. And while for many of us, teenagehood means panic and too much eyeliner or Axe spray—for me, it’s always been about careless genuineness. Genuinely upset. Genuinely laughing. Genuinely caring. Two middle fingers up and a “Fuck You World!” attitude that–until now when I witness it in others–always makes my heart go uuuuuu <3
I love to care. I love witnessing others do the same.
In past essays, I’ve said that being neglected as a child makes us more vulnerable to love bombing—both being love bombed, and doing it ourselves.
My ex and I both love bombed each other.
When I told a friend how they declared their desire to love me, they said, “It sounds like love bombing, Care.” And I remember saying, quickly and quietly, “This never happens to me. Let me have this. Please.”
Love bombing thrives on the kind of scarcity neglect creates.
And scarcity shaped my whole childhood. Scarcity of money. Scarcity of options. Scarcity of touch.
I was never touched as a child.
