I learned how to love by meeting people who taught me about myself. Then I met someone who let me be myself. The love was not instant. It was not love at first sight; it was none of our firsts actually. I knew I loved him when I stopped unpacking my past and my life, and did everything in my power to unpack his so I could learn more. I was hungry to know him better than anyone. I fell in love with a Rubik’s cube and all I wanted was to solve it and relish the rewards.

But this was impossible. He would be a monster for a thousand days, and on the thousand and first he’d be mine again. He would look at me with eyes of adoration and care, and the next day look at someone else with lust. He pushed away every emotion thrown at him and anyone who conjured those emotions inside of him; in the process, I was destroyed.

It took months for me to realize it takes more than a person to destroy me and it takes more than someone else’s denial and ignorance for me to lose myself. And that is when all the love I felt became almost tangible. I didn’t want to solve him. I didn’t want to make sense of his actions. I stopped waiting, I stopped worrying, I stopped hanging off of every word. Because suddenly his actions all made sense, his words supported them, and his heart became clear. I had become a translator, fluent in his heart’s complex language. My love wasn’t about having him for myself anymore, for solving the Rubik’s cube to reap the rewards - it was about watching him solve himself so when he does, when he’s ready, it will never be complex for us again.