We Say ‘I Love You’ Like We’re Trying To Be Brave

It’s the feeling of diving in headfirst when nothing is promised. When even after years of back and forth, you never fully know if you’re finally ready. You aren’t a hundred percent sure what love feels like anymore, and you worry that any good feeling will be synonymous with that.

So we have this moment, with no certainty of tomorrow, to wonder what we do with all this good feeling that exists between us.

We both know how the feeling right before the drop, and we’ve both been on the other side of it. We remember every memory between us this far- all the first nights, the distance, the promises with good intent, and the things we did follow through on. We compile all of this in our minds and it’s some sort of lovely supercut, some kind of Lorde song, some sort of story that we tell everyone someday when they ask where we began.

We remember the night we kissed for the first time, how it was the first in a long time either of us felt something electric and something safe. How despite our desires for personal space, sitting close to each other didn’t feel like some kind of invasion. Holding hands didn’t feel like a surrender.

We remember the moments we looked at each other and saw all sorts of possibility, and the moments we walked away from it. How we didn’t want a feeling to change us, how we didn’t want to be the people so caught up in each other that we forsook everything else. How we walked away never knowing if we would have another chance again, and trying to make peace with that. We remember how good life was to us and did give us those chances- second, third, fourth.

We remember how we took each other for granted and pushed the universe to its limits, daring it to push us back together again. We claimed rebellion and found other mouths and hands to latch onto. We made temporary homes in hearts we weren’t sure of, and we told each other about them. We claimed we knew better. We claimed if we were supposed to work, then we would have by now.

We know now that neither of us truly know anything about life or love or every way it can choose to manifest. How it will take the rest of our lives to even remotely scratch the surface of all we are and who we are capable of becoming. We know now that pretending that we know exactly what will happen to us it just some sort of fallacy that we say in hopes that it gives us the courage to try.

So, in full honesty, we admit that we don’t know where this ends up, but that we know this is something worth believing in. We would rather take this leap together and drown in soft truth than pretend we’re going to land on something solid and permanent when we have no proof.

So, in this moment, we say “I love you” like we’re trying to be brave.

We say it again like an act of defiance against uncertainty.

And we whisper it under our breath like a hopeful promise to the people we will be tomorrow.