Love and Fire

“Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.” 


I heard a quote similar to this years ago. Actually, I saw it.. On a then ex-boyfriend's myspace page days after we split and he went back to his ex. Although the quote twisted a knife in my gut each time I saw it, the pain is obviously gone now.


Tonight I thought back to this quote, not because I was thinking back to said ex, but because I was genuinely shocked when I realized how much stronger my feelings have grown. Stronger than got married, stronger than when he left, and stronger than yesterday. Even stronger than the first time I felt that love (that is how you know your love is real - When things actually go uphill from the honeymoon stage. Infinitely uphill).


Isn't that how love should be? Learning more of your partner each day, growing more into and falling more in love with each breath? I've always thought so, but I guess for some reason I had this idea in the back of my mind that everything would be put on hold for deployment. 
You don't see each other, you don't talk often, and the few conversations you share are never long enough. There is absolutely no physical contact, and your love - half of your heart - is literally half a world away. Everything that it takes to fall in love is no longer happening. It only makes sense to think that your love could lose track, right? Or at the very least, hit a year long standstill? 
As much as I hate to admit it, that was my expectation. Thankfully, it is one of the failed expectations that I couldn't be happier about.


Each and every day I find myself remembering more. Thinking more. Longing more. Aching more. Loving more than the day before.


 And I thought I loved you then.


If you've read my blog about my views on love (That you can love with your head - the type of everlasting, absolute, 75 years of marriage and becoming a single person type of love... and love with your heart - the giggly, butterfly, 'in-love'/puppy love stages) then you will understand when I say this:


I am thankful for this deployment because it is giving me a chance to strengthen and deepen my LOVE for Nathan. Without the superficial distractions, I know that this raging fire is growing for all of the right reasons.
At the same time, I am falling more and more in love with him too - once again, for all of the right reasons. I'm not mistaking love with lust or affection as so many young people (including myself) do/have done. I get goosebumps everytime his name appears or I see a picture of him. My heart stops when my phone rings, and starts back up 10x faster when I see that 6 digit number calling. My head spins and I become intoxicated each time I hear his voice. I am so in love.


Although I stink at poetry, each time I attempt to describe what I'm feeling, I visualize this picture. And when I try to describe it this is what comes out.




There is an infinite field contained within my heart
Already large enough to withstand any wind or storm that may come.
And each thought and new memory sends a gust 
Spreading the fire to places I never knew existed
Adding to the eternal blaze that is my love