Love Amidst Chaos

Youre sitting in a coffee shop sipping on a late while two people behind you carry on a conversation that sounds like an email would’ve sufficed. The barista making their coffee smiles as she hands over the cup filled to the brim with what you’d later find to be the only coffee order you care to remember. You eye them from across the shop and feel the need to close your laptop and at the very least, say hello. Ten years down the line and you’ve got an amazing partner and some annoying but still amazing children and you think to yourself, “Wow, good thing I had that mocha all those years ago.”

Now yes that could very well be an advertisement on television but I digress, that is how most modern love stories come to be. The “meet cute” that we’ve envied from our favorite guilty pleasure movies. But how do we find that person without the luxuries of a world we’ve taken for granted all our lives? Do we brave the outside world? Don our masks and hope for the best? Do we finally take a hammer to our piggy banks and pay for the premium versions of our favorite dating apps? To the last question, yes. Yes indeed. Me personally, I have found the love of my life on said dating apps and couldn’t be more grateful. There was no movie date where I smoothly yawn and drape my arm over their shoulders. There was no trip to a theme park where I win the biggest stuffed animal and file for bankruptcy in the same transaction. What there is however, is a whole lot of love. Shoutout to Led Zeppelin for making that sentence possible.

My partner and I have built our relationship on the strongest love I could ever feel. The first time we met it felt like a visit from an old friend and the adventures we’ve had together are better and bring more happiness and joy than any amount of extra butter or any eight foot tall bear could hope to provide. Once things get back to some sense of normalcy we will do those things and I’ll put my arm around their shoulder, staining the fabric with buttery fingerprints. I will take out a loan and win that giant bear and we will already be in love. Because we are in love and we always will be.

I’ll leave you with this, dear reader. Don’t panic. It’ll all be ok. Swipe right on the love of your life. Swipe right on an amazing future. Go on an adventure and don’t worry about it not being enough to win them over because if you’ve got love, you’ll be set for life.

And for Christ’s sake wear your mask.