What It Feels Like To Love You
Loving you feels like not being embarrassed the first time you discover I’m a toe-grabber, or the time you catch me going in on that Britney Spears song when I thought you were out of the house already. It feels like not being embarrassed to tell you I actually like that Adam Lambert song and that I think Miley Cyrus is a genius. We all have our quirks, and being in love with you means knowing you’re the one person who won’t judge me for mine.
Loving you feels like having the world’s best publicist. Being with you means knowing that we will encourage each other no matter what we want to do, even if you don’t agree with me, even if you think it’s wrong, even if what I want to do is not necessarily your thing, even if the whole thing turns out to be a complete disaster. “Well hey, at least you tried!” you will always say. Love is about accepting your partner for who they are and who they want to be, not about trying to mold them to what you think they should be. Love is encouraging your partner to be the best they can, because the best relationships are the ones where you both bring the most you have to offer.
Loving you feels like learning a foreign language. At first it doesn’t make any sense to me and I don’t understand what I keep doing wrong. I’m flustered and I sound stupid. But the point of learning a language is that the more time you spend with it, the better you get. Being in love with you feels like learning more about you, what you like, what you don’t like. Loving you feels like being out and seeing something that reminds me of you. Love is like being fluent in you.
Loving you feels like the way RuPaul feels when she finds a sickening wig that is blonder and bigger than any look she has ever given us before, a wig that makes her say “Yaaas.” She sees it and instantly knows it’s “the one,” for right now anyway, and she can’t wait to show it to us, proud. Loving you is the tinge of excitement a drag queen feels when she finds herself in a room overflowing with cocktails and sequins. Loving you feels like coming home to a hot shoe I ordered from ASOS. Even though I already know what it looks like, now it’s here and seeing it makes it real, and I’m always excited to rip it out of the package and call it my own.
Loving you feels like being at Target and remembering that you need new underwear. All of our clothes are piled in the dirty clothes bin, and loving you means we would rather buy new socks and underwear than take the ones we have to the laundromat. When I’m picking out your new briefs, thinking about which ones you would look the cutest in, I smile because I think about how your favorite striped ones have a hole right in the ball pouch.
Loving you feels like being excited to make a home with you. It’s like making your favorite meal for dinner when you texted me about what a bad day you were having, how you were walking around in the rain all day, no umbrella, and now your socks are wet. I know how you hate wet socks. When we were first dating this was the first thing I ever cooked for you, and it’s been your favorite dish since. Cooking for you is sharing a life together. No matter what awful things happened to you out in the real world, I want you to know that when you come home, it will all be OK.