Love and Love

This post if brought to you by Katie Elizabeth Hawkes from Katilda. 
She writes so beautifully that I had to have her on my blog.

Some people can peg the exact moment when they fall in love with someone else.

It works that way for me now and again. I recognize it the minute it hits me. Other times, I don't even realize I fell into it until months later when I realize I'm having a tough time climbing out of it. Regardless of timelines, it's funny the little things that can tip a heart over the edge, whether I see it coming or not.

I once fell for a boy because he playfully touched my lip during a conversation about facial piercings. I spent a long time feeling like the imprint was going to be tattooed there forever, heavy on my mouth.

Another time, I'd call it first sight. It was a mess of mutual friends and youth and a pair of blue eyes that added extra beats to my heart and rocked me into feeling.

And then there was the one who finally reached across to the passenger side and covered my hand with his calloused palm.

And yet another time, it snuck up on me. It was a porch swing and late summer nights and a friend who ultimately wanted more than I was ever brave enough to let myself try and give.

Another story, the longest and one of the hardest, took years of my life and put dark circles under my eyes. It aged me and crumbled me and took more from me than I ever should have allowed. It taught me how to want something so wrong for you that you should not possibly want it in the first place and yet part of you thinks you'd still be unable to breathe without it. Ultimately, it left me like a severed artery and an open wound that was long-time prone to infection until a wedding band on another girl's finger finally forced me to stitch it up.

My favorite time, it was simple and sweet and like the rush of an oncoming train all at once. It gave me a place to lay my head and brought the sweet scent of steadiness and home and urged me to curl up and lose myself in it.

Love has never looked or felt just one way to me, even if I didn't always recognize it for what it was at the time. What does it look like to you?