I was friends with my boyfriend for an entire year before I fell
—or should I say before I let myself fall?
Even then, falling took time. It was a slow, aching fall.
The kind that settles in your bones before you find the words for it.
Before you can name it. Before you can say, Oh. This is it.
At some point, my stomach would twist and turn at the sight of his smile, warm and unhurried, like he had all the time in the world to give. Neurons raced under my skin at the thought of his nearness. It’s like my body had already made up its mind before I could catch up.
But he had known long before I did. A few months into knowing me, he was already in love. Already sure. I was taken aback when he told me. Soft and certain. I love you. Just like that. No fanfare, no hesitation. Love is not supposed to move that fast, is it? But love, I’ve learned, does what it wants. It lingers and it leaps. Maybe he wasn’t rushing, maybe I was taking the long way to what had already been waiting for me.
I say it happened slowly, but the truth is, when love finally announces itself, it does so all at once. One minute, you’re laughing about nothing, lost in conversation; the next, your lips marry in the quiet surrender of a tender darkness. The kind of darkness that holds rather than hides, that cradles all the tender, unlit places in you. All the parts of you the sun never quite reached. The places only love can seek and find.
By the end of that year, I was his. Completely. This man with his patient hands and his easy laughter. Loving and so kind. This sweet, sweet man. My heart had made him home and he was my precious love. He is my precious love.
I mean, do I need to go on? Let love burn. Embrace the falling.
After all, It is in the unraveling,
in the gentle unveiling of the heart,
that worlds collide.
ughh. wild how i was just thinking about this the other day and now i stumbled across this essay. friends-to-lovers is my all time favourite trope (irl, fiction or otherwise). the kind that starts purely platonic too; where feelings sneaks in like a mischievous thing and shocks u when u finally realise it. a true slowburn lover forever.
I will call it Demisexual. My kind of love where friendship is first built.