I’m more myself when I’m with you

The healthiest love in my life was never the one I was looking for.

I let myself sink a little deeper into the couch. The glorious sound of my friends chatting away filled me with warmth as my vision softened around the edges. Summer passed around her newest snack plate that she’d carefully assembled. Predictably, we all reach for the sweets first.

“Have you been to the new restaurant on Commerical yet?”

“You know who I randomly bumped into the other day?”

“Do you ever think about…”

This is the exact equation that makes the rest of my life fade out of focus without fail. The noise from the week quieted. My shoulders released the day’s worries. Without trying, we’ve somehow created a magical bubble of peace where nothing urgent can find us.

Nothing beats the feeling of our friendships settling into its familiar rhythm. Topics overlap. We double or triple back. There’s an unspoken understanding that whatever gets shared won’t be judged, criticized, or rejected (at least not seriously).

It’s one of the only places we have the promise of security and safety no matter what. A space where each of us can show up however we want.

Crazy to think that just over a year ago my body’s idea of “safety” and “comfort” looked completely different. Last year marked the final year of a recurring relationship that’s taken far too much of my life. I spent a few years calling conditional love and an underlying feeling of dread “home”. Every time I was asked about my relationship, I jumped to defend what I thought was “a great love”. I think I was also trying to protect the idea that I deserved that kind of love.

Each time warmth was met with silence, meals were skipped to avoid each other, and voices were raised, I sank into myself a little further. Like moths, each interaction ate away at the fabric of my being. It’s shocking to now look back and see just how fractured I had become.

The most shocking part is that my friends had been there all along. They’ve been showing me for over a decade what safe love looks and feels like. My mistake was not knowing how to recognize it. My brain kept confusing unpredictability for intimacy because unpredictability was what it had practiced since childhood. It took me far too long to break that pattern.

A year after leaving that home, I’m sitting on an entirely different couch in a new apartment that just so happens to be on a new continent as well. I spent my last week in Vancouver bumming around various friends’ couches, soaking in the closeness. The conversations haven’t changed much. Summer’s snack plates get more exotic. Cathleen still providing motherly advice on all things to do with men. I still reach for the sweets first.

What’s changed is that my body stopped bracing for love to disappear. Even now, being 8,000 kilometers away, I feel unconditionally supported by each of the women that I love. As I build new routines in a new life that I chose to pursue, I feel more open to love now than I have in the last decade.

For years I’ve wondered why I can’t seem to get love right. It turns out I’ve had it right for so much longer.

It lived on living room couches, was passed across snack plates, and was tucked away in ordinary conversations with women who never asked me to earn my place beside them.

I know I’ll go so much further now that I know what home should feel like.

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Angel xo