True Love Exists

By J. L. Thurston

True love exists. It can exist in many forms. It can enter our lives when we are young, or it can wait until we’re seasoned. True love can be discovered, or it can suddenly awaken. I don’t believe everyone experiences it. I wish we all did. I don’t know why some are able to feel it and others can’t. I only know that I am one of the lucky few who have it, and I will hold onto it forever.

When I first saw my true love, I was seventeen, he was nineteen. We were passingly introduced by a girl who was in love with him. She was a friendly acquaintance to one of my friends, and we had stopped by her house for only a moment. This friend-of-a-friend saw her ‘hot neighbors’ outside and called them over to talk.

Tim was standing a good thirty feet away from me with his brother and uncle. The friend-of-a-friend was fawning all over him, whispering to me that she was going to quote: “bag the hot guy.” He was dressed like some character from The Fast and The Furious in a black silk shirt with blue dragons crawling down each side. He said nothing while the friend-of-a-friend flirted unashamedly with his brother and uncle. They left after a short time, and he still hadn’t said a word.

A few months later, I snuck out with my best friend to a party. There was a huge blow-out at her boyfriend’s best friend’s apartment. I found myself standing in the apartment of none other than Mr. Silent-And-Sexy. He still had not been bagged.

He paid little attention to me while my BFF and I proceeded to consume a vast majority of his liquor, but at the end of the party he drove me to his mom’s where there was an extra bed. He slept on the floor.

Tim and I became friends after that. His best friend was dating my best friend. It was only natural we found ourselves spending more and more time together. We branched out alone, driving around in his car.

I wasn’t single when we met. I was dating a strange little psychopath out of sheer boredom, and that is the truth. Tim gave me rides to that guy’s house several times and I used him as an out to leave early. It was not long before I knew in my heart that I needed to break it off with Crazy and give in to the way I felt about Tim.

We were a swift and intense love. Many would-be-wiser adults kept telling us that the candles that burn brightest also go out the quickest or some such presumptuous bullshit. We had fun proving them wrong.

The evolution of our relationship feels epic to us. We became one person, one mind. I softened his edges and he sharpened mine. I was his cheerleader. His sidekick one day, his superhero the next. He made me laugh, he made me feel beautiful. He elevated me.

We spent a year apart while I was attending school in Los Angeles. No one thought we would last. Hell, we almost didn’t. Our fights were the stuff of legend. But when I returned it was as though nothing had changed. We glided easily back to each other, two halves of one soul finally reunited. We promised to never part again.

The fighting rolled on and intensified. We failed each other, we forgot to show love, we ignored each other, let each other down. We butted heads, then mended each other’s wounds. He could be a real narcissistic gas-lighting prick, and I’m a selfish introvert who knows exactly what to say to hurt him the worst. And after every fight, we would talk, we would move forward.

We may be battle-scarred, but we heal well.

As friends left our lives and opportunities drifted past, we battled our individual depressions together. Tim and I discovered that no one was fully on our team except us, and that was okay. We are closer because of it.

Meeting as teenagers, we’ve grown so different together. Our roots are deep, our branches high. We’ve gone through hell and have felt heaven in the embrace of each other. We’ve brought a beautiful baby girl into the world. She is perfect. Even her doctor says so.

Our anniversary was this month. We’ve been together fifteen years. It hasn’t been storybook, and most of it is far from healthy, but we have a fifteen-year-love. It’s the kind of love that has armor on the outside and warmth within. It has the ability to grow, to change, but it cannot fade. And that is what true love is.