I cannot pinpoint the exact timestamp of this breach—the precise millisecond when my internal security protocols failed and my feelings for you reached this level of intensity. It is almost ironic how someone like me, who had constructed such high, thick, and protective walls, could fall so swiftly and so smoothly for a man so simple. I spent years perfecting my defense mechanisms, only for you to bypass them without even trying to pick the lock.

I am a complex woman. Usually, I know exactly what I want; I move through life with a diagnostic precision. Yet you are the perfect antithesis of the ‘match’ I would seek for my unconventional tastes. You are the precise opposite of my ideal, yet there is a magnetic magnitude to you that draws me in. Is it your gaze? Your sweet almond-shaped eyes that seem to hold a quiet intelligence? Your curly hair? Or perhaps those silent moments that act as a deadbolt on my heart? I absolutely cannot tell, and that lack of certainty is both terrifying and addictive.

I love the way you stare at me, not as a puzzle to be solved, but as a landscape to be admired. I love how your soft hazel pupils track the mess of my black hair before your fingers try—uselessly—to coax my stubborn baby hairs into order. Your hands act as a thermal conduit, warming my soul whenever they are locked in mine. Your deep voice makes me shiver like a thin maple leaf in a sudden draft—a physical reaction to a spiritual presence.

I see the depth in you because I am an ocean myself—vast, heavy, and often misunderstood. I admire how vulnerable you are, and how vividly you express your emotions, wearing them like a garment rather than a secret. I find myself jealous of that transparency; I find it so difficult to lie bare like that without the fear of pathetically breaking into a thousand jagged pieces. I wonder how many times you have done this before. I am envious of the women you were once this genuine with—the one who welcomed your past and tended to your unhealed wounds with unmatchable softness. I am plagued by that envy, a ghost of a life I didn’t share, yet I would never dare to ask her name for fear of making her real.

I dream of you often, my subconscious running simulations of a life we haven’t yet built. I imagine those same eyes resting softly on my face, and my hair garmented with the longest wedding veil, a white contrast to the black depths of my history. I imagine you undressing me with those brilliant, bright-colored irises, seeing the skin and the soul simultaneously. I hear you reading your vows softly, making my heart skip a beat, again and again. The way you give me a forehead kiss makes my entire body melt like a flickering candle, losing its rigid shape to become something warm and fluid.

Being in an unconditioned love—where you are not what you give, but simply who you are at the core—has set me free. It made me realize that my prior relationships were a hollow waste of time. They were business-like; a list of boxes to tick like a cold task list. What can this person give me? How can I benefit most? How can I make him like me more? It was a marketplace of affection, either selfish greed or a form of self-sabotage, rationalized every single day.

We seek validation in everything—our careers, our status, our appearance—but it is a terrifying existence to be forever entitled to seek only a partner’s validation to feel whole. We try to shut down our internal questioning of how we are seen and how we should be treated. Why aren’t we just enough without all of the mortal’s embellishments? Why should we prove our value at every argument, litigating our worth like lawyers in a courtroom? We settle for less than we could ever be, at least in the short span of living and knowledge of ourselves. We delude ourselves into thinking the other is choosing us for our humanity, when they are often just choosing the ‘features’ we provide.

And then you came, as if I had never known a single man in all my years. You molded my imagination into reality so easily that you confused all my senses. You were just you, and I was just me—no titles, no transactions, no pretenses. You couldn’t care less about my past, my occupation, or my unsymmetrical facial features. Neither did I. You were ready to reach within me and see me as I wouldn’t imagine seeing myself—not as a doctor, or a complex woman, or an ocean, but as a soul. You could bring the world to my feet and I would be more than happy to be unconditionally yours.

I am uncontrollably in love with you. I want you with all my being.

Note to my readers: Thank you for subscribing and navigating these depths with me. This Substack is the archive of my walls coming down—thank you for being the witnesses to the breach.