I’ve always defined myself by my pursuit of love. I’m addicted to anything romantic, even if there’s no happy ending. I remember sitting on my bathroom floor in high school, ready to define myself by another Internet-chosen trait: my love language. I tapped through different options on my illuminated screen, excited to see how I could apply these results to the relationship I’d make up in my head with the person I had a crush on that week.
My infatuation with love hasn’t gone away; if anything, it’s grown. But through years of heartache, delusion, and throwing myself away, I’ve abandoned the notion that love can only find me through a partner– and, funnily enough, love has found its way back to me through that, too. My obsession with love is rationalized when I count up all the different languages it speaks to me in, and I pray it never stops.
Quality Time
My dad’s favorite part of every day has always been sitting at the dinner table. While he’s happiest when eating, it’s the people occupying the table that make it his favorite. At home, each member of the immediate family has unassigned assigned seats; this even includes Gibby, our family dog who’s gone blind in his years of old age, who sits on his own chair in the corner. We don’t believe in leaving anyone out, obviously. In high school, when a friend of mine would join for dinner or a family member from out of town would be in for the holidays, our seats didn’t change. Instead, a new chair would be added, and the top of the small dining table would become crowded with a few more plates than normal. When I come home now, my seat waits for me, and so does my dad with a bottle of wine instead of Diet Coke.
In my apartment, the brown pleather sofa is my dinner table most nights, occupied by my roommates and I. Usually a YouTube video is put on the TV that sits on our decorated mantle, and one video turns into five or six. Our empty plates go cold as our laughs grow harder, putting off the work and evening routines that wait for us in our respective rooms. I’m spoiled enough to never want to spend another dinner alone again.
Physical Touch
The brown pleather sofa in my living room has a love language of its own. When responsibilities are limited and couch time can be never-ending, I’ll find my body inching closer and closer towards my roommate’s next to me, until something in a movie or TV show will make us scream and grip each other’s arms. This isn’t a rare occurrence; I’m lucky enough to have found myself two girls who are just as reactive as I am, making every moment feel big.
Our couch has seen other lovers, too. It’s seen me nervously put my knees on top of a boy’s I’ve known for a while, blurring the lines between friends and more as my cheeks flush. Weeks later, we sit in the same spot, but the couch is full of my roommates and more friends, and I’m nuzzled between his arm and chest; a spot I’ve grown comfortable in. My roommate sits next to a boy who once laid his head in her lap in the same nervous way, until they decided their love was better platonically.
Acts of Service
My college apartment has taught me a lot about what it means to be an adult, and the mundane tasks that come with it. It’s taught me to appreciate walking into the kitchen to see the dishes cleaned after a long week, or my laundry neatly folded for me after time had slipped away from me. If I ask who did it, the answer is always the same: a fairy.
The fairy that lives in our apartment does more than just dishes and laundry, though. I keep a note the fairy left me on a particularly bad day once on my wall above the ceramic gnome it was left with. It catches my eye at least once a day as I do my make up or agonize over an assignment, reminding me of those who love me when I can’t find it in me to love myself.
Words of Affirmation
I’m quick to say I love you. I’m not shy to remind those I love just how much I do, through notes, or cards, or a simple text. Sometimes, I’ve been convinced that I’m almost too much when it comes to this– convinced I didn’t deserve that back, and that’s why I wasn’t getting it from the one person I wanted it from the most.
But it’s all around me, in other forms. It means more to me when my roommate surprises me with an I love you before leaving for break, or in a barista complimenting my outfit on a day I didn’t try as hard as I normally do. Hearing simple I love yous or compliments feels better when they’re genuine– and now, that’s all I’m surrounded by. Because I’m not too much, I was just loving the wrong people.
Gift Giving
I get my love of reading from my mom; so much so that every year for Christmas, or Mother’s Day, or her birthday, at least one gift will be a book. I learned that when I was four, and my dad decided to let my brother and I tag along to Christmas shop with him. I’ve never been the best at keeping a secret– my brother continues to remind me that I have a big mouth– and when overexcitement took over my tiny body, I couldn’t contain myself. I got home, crawled into my mom’s lap, and began to tell her everything we’d bought for her, starting with books. It didn’t take long for my dad to shout from another room to get me to stop.
While I’m still not the best secret keeper, giving gifts comes naturally to me. It’s worth it– I watch my roommate open the gift I ordered her months before, tears brimming her eyes as she jumps up and down with incoherent screams of thanks fly from her mouth. I physically shake as my brother and I execute a surprise for my dad’s sixtieth birthday we’ve been orchestrating for months in advance. I make at least four different Valentine’s Day cards, until I can perfect my cursive writing or decide on something else.
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