“Measure in love”

~ RENT

Today culminates a year marked by an amazing array of firsts, and heart-swelling, thump-thump-thumping love that must have been audible to the people I passed on the street.

A year where love was born and just kept growing.

A year where instead of minutes or hours my days kept time in cries and giggles, tiny fingers and toes.

A year where those days and weeks slipped far too quickly into months—where I blinked and every thing had changed forever.

I measured those fleeting months in milestones where love crept into the corners of my unstoppable smile and could be heard echoing after those times of relentless laughter.

This past year was tallied by love in all aspects of my life.

Love put down in words and offered forth from my heart, full of trepidation, into the great unknown of “official” writing. Putting my name on my words and letting them fly off into the world on their virgin flight.

This was that shaky love of early teen-hood—where everything has the potential to be the end of the world. The moment of truth replayed countless times and revisited in different scenarios.

‘A Damn Decade’ of love that matured into “I do’s”—bubbling and breeding with the love of good people voraciously under the twinkle lights in the cool autumn air—reaching a fever pitch I thought would explode and rival the night sky.

This was the heady love of new adventures with old souls, where you know where you’re coming from and are knowledgeably excited for the next big thing. Greedy for more because it tastes so damn good.

Giving myself this time to reflect I was reminded how quickly a year goes by—a month, week, or even a day as well—it makes me nostalgic for the extremely recent past.

But it also buoys me up.

And there were so many more measurable in love moments.

The way it felt to wake to warm sunshine, happy coos, and the smell of coffee.

Bare feet of all ages (and breeds) dancing in the spring-soft grass.

Late night laughter with bonfire silhouettes.

The quiet comfort of being alone in a warm cookie scented kitchen—and how deafening in it’s quietness the snowfall outside my window was.

Obviously a year is not always going to be full of happy moments—the bad is what makes the good better.

And I of course recognized those learning moments, nod quietly at the small lurking regrets, slip past the darkest corners of despair.

I know they’re there. And they need to be weighed and measured too.

They are accountable in making us human, and while it’s easy to say “measure them in love” or find the best part of the worst times to champion—sometimes it just doesn’t exist. While they can creep up on us, catching us breathless at the most inconvenient times—it is ultimately up to us to not allow them to dictate our timeline.

I won’t forget them for what they are—but I will choose to measure this past year (and hopefully many more to come) in love instead.

“It’s these little things, they can pull you under
Live your life filled with joy and wonder”

~ R.E.M

Relephant Read: 

Dear Soulmate, I have Always Loved You.

Author: Jess Sheppard

Editor: Renée Picard

Image: Flickr