12/29/2025

T, Mi Amor,

I’m writing today because I need to get my bearings right. Last night’s conversation was pretty heavy. But in a very weird way, we ended it so peacefully and lovingly. You remember how we had those intense bouts once in a while before when we started? I think it was during one of those nights that you thought that you might not want to be with me any more. But hey, you did stick around. And we did make it through all that. So it’s gotta say something about us.

Even yesterday’s conversation wasn’t an easy one. But I think what’s important for us to acknowledge is not what the conversation manifested as externally. But what happened internally that brought it forward. You remember at one point I asked you – what are you really afraid of. I ask these questions not to poke and open and expose. But to hold up the mirror so you can see what is happening under the surface for yourself. And in no way is this a one way mirror. I see what’s happening with me too. Which is why my writing is focussed around what I am feeling and what is going on with me rather than what is going on with you. Because that is something that is intensely intimate and you need to be able to sit with it first before you hand it to me. When you choose to.

There’s a very deep thought that was reflected back at me recently. No two people in the world will love the precisely same way. Even if they were nurtured the same way, I think nurture plays a very important role in how the love manifests itself. We’ve both gone through our own storms and rites of passage to get here. It was like a culmination of two rivulets. The only thing that remains to be seen is whether we continue as one as we move forward.

You know where i grew up, I had no place. I had no choice. I had to earn everything. Earn the toys. Earn the room. Earn the love. And I think that’s the hardest thing that I have had interred into my bones. You get the love that you earn. This happened from everyone, including those who had to give it to me for free – my family. Which is precisely why when I love, I love in the performative, expansive, thoughtful way that I do. It’s the only thing I know. I don’t think you would ever be able to fathom what that feels like. Just like how I will never be able to fathom the kind of love you got from yours. You know I never had a family unit. So I built family through connection and commitment.

And trust me, that’s not a bad thing. Chosen family can love you just as fiercely as your inherent one. As long as they know that they are that – chosen. But it’s not just that they are chosen, they have to choose you too. And this is the crux of it all. People who grew up with strong families don’t understand the weight of being chosen.

And I have come to realise that the few connections that I have in my life are all those who have come from strong families. The kind that afforded space to sit in when the storms raged outside. The kind that is flawed but still yours. The kind that is present and doesn’t seek permission.

So what fundamentally happens is a mismatch in the depth and intensity with which I love and the way you do. The only way I know how to love is to go all in or nothing. “I want commitment which will turn into marriage.”Sure. “I want to have kids.” Of course. “I want that house with the white picket fence.” Yea me too. “Give me your credit card pin”. 2402. “What’s the phone unlock code”. 111198. All the wants and needs expressed to me and those never expected, I make my own. I bare myself to the bone. Because I only know how to love freely and expansively and openly.

But here’s the catch that I hadn’t realised I had subconsciously built. In some very deep way, there was an unspoken hope. And unspoken hope that my intensity would get matched. That the love will come back to me in the exact same way as I give it. But like i said before, no two people can love in the same way. Which is what affords a perfect segue into what I came here to say today.

When I setup the manifest for January, I wrote – This month, I choose to step forward without needing certainty. I allow new beginnings to unfold without assigning them a destination or a savior. I trust myself to walk into the unknown grounded in my own values, intuition, and resilience. I let connection enrich my life without becoming the source of my stability, and I let hope exist without turning it into expectation. I move bravely, guided by faith in who I am becoming, knowing that whatever unfolds, I will not abandon myself.

And this is precisely what I came to realise today. I think the lesson that I had to learn this month was not just setting off into the unknown without knowing what will happen. The lesson was to let hope exist without turning it into expectation. To receive the love that you give me as it is and not as I wish it were. To accept that the cautious love is different love but not any lesser love. To love freely, without needing proof that i get it back just as the way I gave it out. To understand that it isn’t less love, but love without strings.

To trust in your love.

Love Forever And Always,

XOXO,

A