Somehow You've Managed To Make The Girl Who Is Broken, Smile Again
With you, it's so different. Everything is just so different.
Andrey Yurlov / shutterstock By Liss Schultz
To say my love life has been complicated for me is an understatement.
One major thing that I learned, though, is that I’m sick of complicated things. I’m tired of trying to mold love into something I can hold between my fingertips.
I despise being torn between what’s right and what’s wrong, or what I should do, and who I should love. But with you, it’s not about any of that.
It’s not about whether this will make perfect sense one day or whether it’s a forever type of feeling.
It’s not about having all the answers or being able to predict what the future will hold. It’s not knowing who we will become or where we will go before we’ve even started.
I’ve always been the kind of girl who likes to know every detail, who likes to plan everything, who likes to see the world laid out in front of my eyes and be able to map out the first few steps.
But with you, it's so different. Everything is just so different.
It’s not about counting the days or calculating the probability that we stay perfectly content where we are.
It’s not about measuring our affection, seeing if it will transform one day into true love and eternal happiness. And it’s definitely not about having this predetermined path that these feelings will guide us on.
You make me smile. And for once in my life, I’m perfectly content.
When I look at you, I see a thousand and one stories carved into your skull. I see memories, I see laughter, I see the hurt, I see love. I see the person you’ve been, the same person I want to discover.
I feel a million and one things I want to tell you, dancing on the tip of my tongue like sparkling cider.
When you speak, I find myself engulfed in your words, like they’re foreign and strange, like I’m listening to a whole new language; I’m completely paralyzed in fascination.
When you smile, I feel my heart swell in my chest, pulsing through the tips of my fingertips; setting myself on fire from the inside, out.
When I look at you, I don’t know what we will become. But that doesn’t really matter.
What I know is that every single time our eyes meet and your lips turn into an upwards curve, I feel this unexplainable light inside me — a light that’s been dimmed for some time now.
I feel this unmeasurable strength, this undefinable courage to fall back into love, no matter how many times I’ve been pushed down.
You don’t have all the answers. You aren’t a saint, my savior, or my knight in shining armor.
There are so many ways that you won’t measure up to the world’s standards. You’re perfectly imperfect, too genuine, and you already have taken up entirely too much space in my heart.
But you make me see the world in a different light. You make my head spin in circles. You make the corners of my mouth turn upwards and stay frozen, a constancy I’ve never experienced before.
You make me smile. You make the world a little bit brighter.
You make me believe in things like forever and happiness with that flawless smile of yours.
I don’t have all the answers of where we will be days, months, years from now or who we will become.
All I know is that you make me smile. And I’ll continue to try and make you smile right back.
Melissa Schultz is the former head editor and senior writer for Unwritten. She focuses on topics about family, motherhood, relationships, and wellness.