On the Love

I wondered what the love would be like. The love they all tell you of. Mother love, they say, is like nothing you’ve ever experienced. I wondered if it would be like when I fell in love with Phil. Unavoidable, lusty, chemical, encompassing heart-wrenching absurd-manic deep-desirous love. It is not like that. I wondered if it would be self-sacrificial, a love that would void my own identity, override my selfishness. A robbing, hovering-wanting protective-fearful kind of love. It is not quite like that, either. On the first day of you, I felt the love like awe. Like belief in the impossible. A spiritual kind of love that as a lifelong Atheist I’ve never known. I couldn’t truly believe in a human grown inside of me from a few simple cells of your dad and me combined. I couldn’t believe in you until you appeared, existing so fervently. It was then I first felt it. Love like a miracle. Love like magic. On the fourth day I felt the love grow within from someplace core and animal. My identity changing at the cellular level until I suddenly embodied your being as a part of me, a new limb. All I wanted to do was stare at you, feel your skin hot on mine, smell your perfect breath. I feel now, at times, that I am you and you me. I’m not scared of this metamorphosis. Instead, I feel saved by it. By you. I haven’t been connected to anything outside of myself in this way in a very long time. Ever? Maybe since my little sister was born when I was six. I feel suddenly and fully that I belong in this world. To be yours. For you to be mine. It’s been years since I have felt fully familied. Since my father died. Years since I’ve been able to shake my sense of loneliness in this lonely world. And all at once, in my king-sized bed with you at my breast and Phil holding both our hands, the isolation of being, lifted completely. I feel my love for you continuously morphing and growing. Complex as the love I hold for myself, the love I hold for this world. As inexplicable as birth, life, and death. The love is like that.