Consideration

Love is considerate.

I set his message notifications to high priority on my phone and he texts me to ask if I want anything every time he goes to get himself food. I don’t write about him the way I have about past lovers— rash, unthinking, distorted. All the words I give him are gentle even on paper. I make them so, syllable by syllable.

I lose myself in lectures, doodle in my notebook, and think back to biology classes in school. Mutualism is when two species interact and benefit. Two types. Obligate or facultative. The former cannot survive without the symbiosis, the latter can. I think about how a younger me would have dreamt of a lover who shares the same breath as her but now I think of the honeybee and its favourite flower as the ideal kind of love. Hydrogen is flammable and oxygen helps it catch fire and yet, the two can combine to form something incredibly stable and life-sustaining. Even in my boring science lessons, I tie my thoughts back to him. Love is considerate.

(Sometimes) Lying is considerate. I watch him watch my mind turn against me. I watch him wonder how to help, all in vain. The thing with pain is, it is easier to look at if you know the way out. But most of the time, my mind is a maze that changes shapes every passing minute. I could watch him watch me try to scramble out of it all, all the pain or I could save him with a considerate lie. Sometimes, I do. I lie to him about bad days and nights and I wipe away tears while he’s on the other end of the call, and I lie to him when he’s having fun with his friends and I lie to him about how my day was when he’s also had a bad one, and I lie to him when he’s about to fall asleep or when he’s just woken up. This is how we love— an ultimate truth (love) sprinkled with small lies (consideration). Love is considerate and sometimes consideration is lying.

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