Falling in Love

"Love: A profoundly, intense, tender, passionate feeling of deep affection for another person….”

——-I’ve been in love once in my life with the only person I have ever been in a relationship with. How it happened, I don’t know. I can’t even explain the order of how everything came about. One minute he was just another funny classmate in high school fooling around, making jokes and being a 17 year old kid…and the next minute, he had become my best friend whom I shared absolutely everything with, unconditionally. Every secret, every uncertainty, my fears, ambitions, dreams, laughter, passions and worries. Everything was out on the table. No secrets, no lies. Life was a bliss.

The first time I had officially realized that I had fallen in love with this guy was at home back in 2009. It was just another day, cleaning my room, texting the boyfriend. I was a fresh new meat in college when Keri Hilson’s song, “Knock You Down” played off my iTunes. Prior to this instance, I had heard the song a few other times but I hadn’t really payed attention to the lyrics until this day. “I never thought I’d be in love like this. When I look at you, my mind goes on a trip…I never thought I’d fall for you as hard as I did. You got me thinking about our life, a house and kids…”, are Hilson’s words that had that love epiphany effect on me. I seriously stopped what I was doing and sat on my bed to listen to the song. I was in shock with myself because I just knew I was falling hard for this guy…HARD! I wanted to snap out of it because I felt like it was too soon, too fast. I was too young to know love. Truth is, I was just freaking out to this new feeling. Without knowing it, everything was really just falling into place perfectly by the grace of God. I prayed that night and told Him to guide me. That I was experiencing something so different that I had obviously never felt before. I told him I didn’t know what to do. Whether to tell my boyfriend or not. To ignore it and keep quiet or scream it out to the world that I was the luckiest girl in the world falling in love with the greatest. Life was definitely a bliss.

God, just writing it now makes me smile and I feel like a dumb loser haha Anyway, back to the story. Falling in love has been the greatest experience and feeling I have ever in my life felt before. I now understand what people mean when they say it’s indescribable. It truly is because no matter how many words you say, how many ways you say it, it will never measure up to what it feels like and what it really is. However, for the sake of this post, I will do my best to put it in words.

Love to me is an endless feeling. When I love, I love with all the intensity that I could possibly have. I love through the good and the bad, through the joy and the tears, the sick and the healthy. I love with all of my heart without any measure of what could come. Falling in love has opened up a new side of me that I didn’t know I had. Falling in love has taught me to be more tolerant of everything that can hurt me but it has also taught me a new level of what respect means. When it came to this guy, my love for him grew every single day. My thoughts were clustered by him, my eyes could only see him and my heart was full of love for him. He was a new reason to wake up everyday, finish homework on time, get chores done, saving my allowance, busting train trips to his house, walking extra miles, coming home past my curfew [sorry mom], all for the love of just being with the one I loved. And all of that was just the beginning of what I was willing to do for him.

Life couldn’t have been better. I was happy. I was in love. Everyday I wanted to show him new ways of loving him. I wanted to make him feel like the only man in the world, like the King of the world and that’s why his nickname became “My King”. He meant everything to me. When he was sick, I just wanted to be there and care for him. If he was happy, I wanted to be twice as happy for him so his happiness plus my happiness would multiply and bring him triple the happiness. If he was ever worried, sad or scared, I made sure to let him know I was there. That he was always going to have someone to count on whether it was a good pair of ears to listen to him or a pair of lips to share advice…or even better, kisses to help alleviate the pain. No matter what it was, I made sure to let him know that he was my priority, my boyfriend but importantly, my best friend.

The more time we spent together, I learned new ways to love him and twice as hard. I learned to love him flaws and all, mind you to me, he was perfect. My love for him became infinite. Loving him was a gift to myself. It was never hard work…EVER! I enjoyed loving him, doing little things for him. Sometimes I would write letters, other times I prepared him surprised dinners for anniversaries/Valentines Day because quite frankly, I have a passion for NOT cooking haha So that was an extra step I wanted to take for the love of him. One time, I went to his job just to drop off kisses. Not the kind you smooch on a face but the kind you eat, Hershey’s chocolate kisses. I decorated the hood of his car and spelled out “I <3 U” with the chocolates. It was cute and it was a small detail to let him know that he was on my mind. That he was the only man in my life that I loved, that I wanted to love.

My love for this guy was exactly what Dr. God prescribed:

“ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails…”

I learned to be even more patient, more understanding, caring, loving, truthful and faithful woman for him to demonstrate that my love for him was real. I was willing to do anything that needed to be done to keep our love flame burning harder than ever. My love for him was alive every day. If ever I was mad, I learned to open up and tell him what bothered me. If he was mad, I learned to apologize and accept I was in the wrong. Our friendship and love was brighter every day. I was always honest. I was always faithful. I was always there, ready to fight through any obstacle or problem that came our way. I was prepared to stand right behind him, ready to catch him if he ever fell and was ready to stand next to him to help him get back up and walk with him through any battle.

Falling in love with this guy was one of the greatest memories my life has ever experience. I trusted him 120% I believed in him 120% I had faith in him 125% He was my boyfriend, the man that I knew could do anything he set his mind too. If he got opportunities to be better, I always cheered him on. Never was I jealous. If girls checked him out, I would tell him how lucky I was to have him to myself instead of picking a fight. If we ever fought [it was rare for us to fight], we made sure we made up ASAP. Being in love with him made everything easier because out of love, I either wanted to fix the broken or add more happiness to the blessings that we were graced with. Falling in love was a new journey that I never wanted to escape…and now, I can say, I’m happy to have loved and would go through anything and relive any pain just for the pleasure of knowing that I have loved. There is no greater feeling than to know love and even better, feel loved.

XO, -Maria