Queen of the Winter Night

I looked at him, the suspicion rising and the ice waxing hard over that thumping red monster that got me into so much trouble.

You always had to be careful when a man was being so nice. That meant that they wanted something. Whenever they were at their sweetest, you needed to be at your keenest, or else you were going to end up burned.

At least, that’s what I thought until six months later.

It’s easy in this world to become course and hard-hearted. We live in a time of instant gratification and unbelievable self-absorption. We are the kids that have arrived at adulthood after years of relentless indoctrination into the world of divorce and “take care of yourself first”. We were coddled by mothers and fathers who told us we were the center of the universe, the best out of all the babies. We were educated by the teachers and tutors that told us “Trying is enough. If it’s not, quit and move on to the next thing.”

Find love in this modern age is a direct result of these lessons. People use people for just a few hours of entertainment. They reach out to them, open up to them, expose their most bare vulnerabilities, only for a night, then disappear, leaving behind broken dreams and wounded hearts. We find what we want, acquire it as quickly as possible, and then move on at the first sign of trouble, at the first sign of temptation.

This world had taught me that love wasn’t real. Relationships where nothing but a rental transaction. You would meet someone, get what you wanted from them, be that sex, attention, companionship or just sheer distraction. When you found something better, or things became “work”, the best thing to do was split and run - before they split and run on you.

When I met Heath*, I knew it was the same. Sure, he was handsome and foreign and smart, but that was only more dangerous. We talked for hours, and we liked the same bands. We had similar views on society and similar views on religion. But, there’s billions of people out there; billions of people with the same attitudes and views, the same grasp of reality and the true condition of the world - that’s just a statistical fact. Just have a few things lined up does not “true love” make. I didn’t expect this to be different.

But even from the beginning, it was.

It started small, pulling out a chair, holding open a door, bringing a tiny trinket on our first date. Then it got bigger.

Showing up at my flat at 7pm with cough medicine, ginger ale, soup, bread and cough drops - all because I mentioned a cough. Showing up to watch movies and finding a pair of warm slippers waiting by the door so I didn’t have to walk around with cold feet.

It was being told on a daily basis, “I love you.” It was finding little hearts hidden under my pillow at night as I went to bed. It was being told, “You’re beautiful” when I was lounging around in sweatpants and oversized t-shirts. It was surprising me with dinner on the table after coming in from a long day of work. It was showing up randomly and bursting into the room just to say, “I just wanted to tell you that I love you and I’m so happy that you’re here.”

Slowly, my heart began to melt, and I was force to realize that, at least somewhere in this world, in some tiny recesses far away from where we would ever dream to be, we can find love. There were your typical gifts, flowers, clothes, etc. But there where little things every day, things he went out of his way to do to show he truly loved me.

Day after day, Heath was teaching me that not only was I worthy of love, but that all of my flaws, all my little imperfections were actually beautiful little pieces of me; tiny little sparkling pieces that came together to create a person that shone brighter than a star in the eyes of someone else.

I could feel the tiny pieces of ice melting away. Slowly, I was realizing that I was not the mistakes of my mother. He chipped away, day by day, at the wall of stone and ice. He didn’t run when I tightened up in his hugs. He didn’t “change his mind” when I didn’t call or text. Through Heath’s love, patience, understanding, affection and tenderness, I was discovering that I was free to be loved, deserving of love, and greatest of all - I was able to love, deeply, passionately and openly.

I did not have to be something else or someone else. I did not have to change who I was or what I wanted. I did not have to check my thoughts or my words at the door. I no longer had to “dumb” myself down or keep myself “numb”. I no longer needed to look for opportunity. I no longer needed to be validated by many; I no longer needed to be validated at all.

Most of all, I learned that I was not the people around me, the people who paid attention to me, or the things that I owned. I could not be loved until I learned to love myself. No one could fill that whole deep inside but me.

Through this love, I learned that to be alive is to be validated. Just to be a living person is to have a right to love and be loved. We do not need to look at the world with suspicion and mistrust. In order to gain the most from the tiny time that we spend on this planet, we must live with our hearts open and our minds clear. When you are ready to leap into the arms of the universe, she will greet you with treasures and love beyond measure, but only if you learn to let go.

I sit here now a believer in a world in which not every lover is out to hurt you. The world I see now, while sharing in great misery, is also one that is capable of sharing great love. There is serendipity in this life, if we only have the courage to pursue the heartbeat of our dreams. When we shed the skin of our past and realize that our mistakes, and the mistakes of our peers, are not our future, we can truly form relationships that change the world for the better.

*My partner’s name has been changed from his actual name to Heath for the purpose of privacy.