the mysterious ways of love

to miss someone this much is to admit: i was changed

i think of all the people i’ve met in my life who felt like recognitions, not introductions. people who arrived with that quiet familiarity, like the scent of something i loved as a child but hadn’t smelled in years. they didn’t come crashing into my world; they just appeared. as if the universe had been gently, patiently guiding us toward the same intersection all along. no fireworks. no fate-declaring fanfare. just presence. a weight in the air. and suddenly, nothing was casual anymore.

and yet, as quickly as they arrive, sometimes they have to go. not out of betrayal, not even out of choice, but out of life. out of logistics. out of timing. out of geography. and that’s what makes it hurt so much—because you can’t even be angry at them. they didn’t do anything wrong. they just existed too far from permanence. and still, they carved out a place in me where no one else had ever touched. and now i live with this echo. this memory that sometimes feels louder than the present.

but isn’t it something… that even in the absence, love continues? it stretches across cities, across time zones, across long days and empty arms. it shapeshifts. it shows up in songs, in smells, in dreams, in the way i say certain words now that sound more like them than me. it hurts, yes. but it also honors. because to miss someone this much is to admit: i was changed. i was met in a way that no distance can undo. and maybe that’s what makes it real.

so when i ask myself—would i choose it again, knowing how much it would ache later?—my answer, somehow, is still yes. a thousand times yes. because some connections are worth the longing. because love doesn’t always stay in our hands, but it never really leaves our hearts. because some people walk toward us like they’ve been searching through lifetimes, and even if they can’t stay, they leave something behind that no time or distance can erase.

and maybe that’s what love really is: not just the joy of holding someone, but the courage to keep loving them when you can’t. to remember that the bond doesn’t disappear when the closeness does. it just becomes a quieter kind of sacred. something lived in between the hours. something remembered when the world is still. something that, if we’re lucky, teaches us that the depth of love isn’t in the having—it’s in the feeling. even from afar.

with love from the stillroom,
cibelle