By: Gabriela Yareliz
I left my house and felt something was different. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, until I reached the intersection, while I was waiting to cross. I wasn’t wearing leggings; that was it! In the winter, leggings become a second skin, if you will. I wear leggings under everything. The reason: warmth.
It felt like a spring day, and I could feel my jeans on my legs. I could feel the denim. I felt strangely free and different. It was a feeling I hadn’t felt in months. One of those feelings you can’t just describe to understand– it just has to be experienced.
It made me think about love. We have our ideas about love; not all those ideas are wrong. We have our ideas as to how love arrives, and how it will make us feel. We long for love to arrive, just as we long for spring to warm us after a long winter. Love melts us like sunshine. It doesn’t always arrive as expected, and in fact, it may take you by surprise. You just need to live it to understand it.
Love is an action word. Love frees us. There is friction, sometimes. Surprises, too. Mostly, we realize that everything has changed; not because every little thing has changed but because we are seeing the world through a different lens. We feel something is different. We can’t put our finger on it, until we can. It then hits us. Hits us hard.
Love has a way of breaking us into little pieces and then putting us back together. It makes us feel whole; fragile but strong; ideal; at peace; safe.
Maybe, love isn’t what I had expected all along. Maybe it broke me and made a mosaic. Maybe, it surprised me. Maybe, I had to realize that I had what I thought I had been waiting for.
Love. It is as real as my jeans touching my skin on a late winter day. At first, I was a bit confused, but then, when I realized what was going on, it made me feel free and everything was different.
GABRIELA YARELIZ 