either we’re getting married or he’d introduce me to a new restaurant.
is this love or just longing?
Love doesn’t have to last forever. It exists in many forms.
Beyond confessions. Beyond vows. Beyond promises.
Those love stories told us the wrong thing.
An all-consuming force that sweeps you off your feet, and that once you feel it, you just know. But what happens when you don’t know? When the lines blur between love and attachment, and you’re left questioning whether it was ever love at all?
Looking back, I wonder if I ever really understood what I was getting into. Maybe I was too young, or maybe I just didn’t have the words for it back then. I remember being swept up in the idea of connection, feeling seen by someone in a way I hadn’t before. But was that love? Or was it just the comfort of having someone there, the warmth of knowing I wasn’t alone in navigating the mess of growing up?
It was about me, and the journey of figuring out what love truly is, and what it isn’t. And that’s a journey I’m still on. Either we’re getting married, or he’d just introduce me to a new restaurant.
You can’t build a life on maybes. It’s not about waiting for the day they finally choose you, or the moment they turn to you and say, “This is it.” Because that moment never came. It was always just out of reach, like a place you’ve heard about but never visited, a promise unspoken yet implied in every gesture.
And I thought if I waited long enough, held on tightly enough, that love would show up like the check at the end of dinner — something inevitable, something earned after all the waiting and trying. But love doesn’t work like that. Sometimes, it’s there in the small moments, and other times, it’s absent even when you’re both sitting at the same table.
And perhaps, that’s what I was afraid to admit — that I was waiting for something that wasn’t coming.
It was always just two people, sitting across from each other, sharing a meal but maybe, not a future.
Now I’m in a relationship, and it feels different. Not like before — not the same uncertainty, not the same quiet waiting. It’s softer, quieter, but more solid. It doesn’t feel like I’m holding my breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s not a series of maybe someday promises or silent questions about where this is all heading. Instead, there’s a kind of steadiness in the air, like I’m not always wondering if love will stay. And it feels… optimistic.
But, here we are. In another restaurant.
It’s strange how life brings you back to the same familiar settings, yet the feeling is so different. The table is the same, the act of ordering food, the laughter, the shared conversation — all things I’ve done before. But this time, it feels less like an audition for something more and more like just being here, in the moment, together. There’s no heavy weight of expectation hovering over every bite, no unspoken countdown ticking in my mind, asking when the conversation will turn to what’s next.
Maybe this restaurant will become our place. Or maybe we’ll never return here again. But it doesn’t matter. Because now, I’m not searching for meaning in every meal, not clinging to the hope that this will be the moment where everything falls into place.
Instead, I sit here, knowing that love is happening in the quiet moments, the spaces between. And this time, it feels different — not because I’ve found all the answers, but because I’ve finally stopped asking all the questions.
Either we’re getting married or he’d introduce me to a new restaurant.
