Love is a lot like breathing, you don’t realize you’re engaging in it until time stalls
enough to recognize you’re deep in the act. Recognition of either is scary, if you
think too hard you begin to hold your breath and end your affections. The invisibility
of breath like love requires a closeness of a chest cavity opening. Lonely winter air
gives way to its physical form, a ghostly mist that embraces you whole. You can’t
really see it, but if you look close enough you can recognize that it does exist. From
the moment you fall into the world, you gasp for air fighting for it the rest of your life.
You’re born with the ability to love though the realization comes later, but once you
love you know there'll never again be a time you sustain without. The thing about the
curiosity of deciding to stop breathing and the desperation to stop loving is that: if
your choice isn’t to survive it is to perish. So, we try not to look too closely and dull
our awareness to deny the cocoon we’re trapped in. We continue to take another
breath each time the last one ends, and we continue to look for love after we’ve lost
it. For now, the air continues to fill my lungs and the inevitability of love fills my heart.
Eventually it will run out, but until then my lungs fill again each moment. Until I
decide, I’m done surviving.