I used to believe that loving someone meant wanting the same things. Or at least wanting them enough to try. Enough to compromise, to adapt, to translate myself into a shape that could sit comfortably beside theirs.
But standing on the path, with the air cold and still at sunrise, I felt the truth land without argument.
This is what I like.
Not as a preference to defend, not as an identity to perform—just as a bodily fact. The ground firm under my feet. The path narrow enough to keep my attention gathered. The sound of my steps meeting the quiet without interruption. No screens. No spectacle. Nothing asking me to react.
I noticed how my breathing slowed without instruction. How my shoulders dropped. How my thoughts stopped circling and began to stretch out, long and unknotted, like the land itself. This wasn’t excitement. It wasn’t escape. It was recognition.
And with that recognition came something else—an easing of a long-held tension.
I don’t have to like what the other likes.
I don’t have to find meaning in big screens or crowded landmarks or shared enthusiasm for things that leave me hollowed out. I don’t have to explain why tuna from a can feels sufficient when a warm meal feels like too much. I don’t have to turn my love into participation.
Loving doesn’t require me to stand where I don’t belong.
The shift wasn’t dramatic. There was no confrontation in my mind, no rehearsed speech. Just a quiet re-sorting. Love moved out of the category of doing things together and settled where it had always been meant to live—in care, in steadiness, in the space we return to after going our separate ways.
I could feel the difference immediately. The absence of guilt. The absence of negotiation. The relief of no longer trying to make my nervous system compatible with someone else’s appetite.
This path didn’t compete with him. It didn’t diminish what we share. It simply existed on its own terms, and for the first time, I let that be enough.
I don’t need to want the same to love him.
I don’t need to love spectacle to belong.
I don’t need to carry someone else’s hunger to prove my devotion.
Walking there, held by the quiet and awake to myself, I understood that the truest shift wasn’t away from him—it was back into my own body.
And from there, love felt lighter.
Less entangled.
More honest.
Like a path that doesn’t ask you to arrive anywhere—only to keep walking as yourself.
WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co
Travel in Life 