fluent in trying

what's your love language?

My favourite love language is trying. Not the cinematic gestures, not the grand confessions, but the trembling, almost-clumsy effort of someone choosing to reach for me. I think about the person who once laced up running shoes, though they despised running. They were out of breath, stumbling, laughing at themselves, but gosh—wasn’t that love? The willingness to look foolish just to stand in my orbit.

💌: image source

I notice the way effort makes a cathedral out of ordinary things. The way someone notices I linger a little too long at a shop window. The way they agree to visit places they’ve never thought to go, not because they know me completely, but because they want to try. The devotion isn’t in the success—it’s in the attempt. It isn’t about mastery or elegance, but in the clumsy repetition of “I’m here, I’m trying, I want to learn you.”

I think about how easy it is to drift apart without effort. How silence can become a river we forget to cross. But when someone keeps showing up, even imperfectly, it feels like a rebellion against the loneliness that waits for all of us. Trying is the only thing I’ve ever trusted. Maybe that’s why I hold onto it like scripture: flawed, trembling, real.

Love, for me, is not the finished painting, but the brush dipped too many times, the strokes gone astray, the canvas messy with revisions. It’s the proof that someone wanted to create something with me, even if it doesn’t turn out perfect. That is enough. That has always been enough.

With love,

J

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