When love is a verb that youโre living, it becomes your entire state of being.
Feeling (noun): an emotional state or reaction. A feeling may be a noun, but love done right is a verb.
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What is love? Being in love is holding hands and hugging hard. Itโs fighting over stupid things, saying things you donโt mean and then apologizing. Itโs drinking too much and lying down on the damp ground, shoulders touching, stars dancing dizzily above you.
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Itโs saying โI love youโ for the first time, the words bursting out of you in a single breath, inhaling their โI love you, tooโ in return. Itโs spending Christmas with his family and Thanksgiving with hers, even if neither one of you is really comfortable doing that yet.
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Love is learning the art of truly listening and avoiding the temptation of simply waiting for your turn to talk. Itโs making space for somebody to be their best selves. Itโs leaving the last slice of pizza and the last piece of cake.
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Itโs attempting to make his momโs chicken noodle soup instead of warming up a can of Campbellโs in the microwave. Itโs baking her a lopsided birthday cake with drippy frosting instead of buying one at the grocery store.
Love is holding her in her sleep, even though youโre burning up because her body retains heat like a moving furnace. Itโs eating really weird food when sheโs on a diet and not making any faces until she turns her back.
Itโs pretending that you donโt mind kissing him when he straight up tastes like a garlic clove. Itโs remembering that forgiveness is a daily practice and grace a lifelong work in progress. Itโs infrequently ordering flowers, but frequently giving back rubs and foot massages.
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Love is moonlit walks on the beach but itโs also long walking down even longer hospital corridors, each step lonelier than the last. Itโs shaving her head when she canโt bear to see all that hair on her pillows, in her brush, collected in the shower drain. Itโs forgetting how to be squeamish around blood, learning how to change IV lines, and developing a second sense about when to pass the puke bucket.
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Itโs reassuring him itโs OK to move on, to meet somebody new, because if he mopes around for too long once youโre gone youโll give him a ghostly kick in the ass. Itโs finding memories in the way her pillowcase smells when you press your face into it.
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Love is saying a hundred hellos and a thousand goodbyes. Itโs an exercise in self-restraint and self-respect. Itโs breaking down boundaries in the best possible ways but never abandoning the posts you have stationed along the tender lines of your heart.
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Itโs always having a plan but never living by your expectations. Itโs opening up your chest and letting another person climb inside, and trusting them to be a good tenant.
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What is love? Well, love is never just a noun, just a feeling. Itโs always shifting, changing, morphing, moving. Itโs a painting with endless brushstrokes, a pottery wheel that never stops spinning. The truest love packs as much action as a superhero movie into one minute of bodies melting into each other like warm butter.
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This is what we should be searching for, why we shouldnโt settle, why itโs worth every second you ache for a soulmate before you find one. When love is a verb that youโre living, it becomes your entire state of being.
Written byย Cassie Fox
Originally appeared on Yourtango.com
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