And I wasn’t afraid.

I didn’t get tense. My palms didn’t get sweaty. My heart grew stronger, but didn’t skip a beat.

You’re supposed to prepare for a moment like this, but in the end, there’s nothing you can do to prepare. You’re either ready or you’re not. A bit liberating, in a way, knowing it’s largely out of your control. Terrifying, too, for precisely the same reason.

You’re taught, you’re schooled, you’re socialized. From your earliest memory onwards, you remember the lessons, the images, the anecdotes, the advice, and then you get to the point where it’s all supposed to coalesce and your realize you’ve been led astray. All the fairytales and romantic comedies and the poems and the dreamed encounters…well, they are all revealed as the shams they are when the real moment arrives.

You are either ready or you’re not. And that’s a plural “you” we’re talking about here. There’s no one person carrying the full load. You bear the burden equally, and one person can drop the weight for the both of you, sending it tumbling back down the mountain, waiting for one of this now shattered pair to walk down and begin the ascent anew. Or maybe neither of you picks it up again, leaving someone new to start their climb with long-abandoned emotions.

But at some point, they hold out their hands to you. Their lives are in your keeping, if you so choose. Quite often we don’t. That doesn’t mean we outright reject them, but we don’t wholeheartedly accept them, either. Easiest in the short-term, but crueler as time goes by. And yes, sometimes the firm initial grip is eroded by forces you can’t foresee, but at that moment, the moment of choice, you can’t know what the future will bring. You can only feel it.

And you could only feel that when their hand enters yours, palm rests against palm, fingertips glide across cheeks, and two chests filled with strong, slow heartbeats come close together, heeding the call of their compatriot.

That feeling cannot be conveyed. It remains resolutely there, in the feeling. And it’s a unique sensation, one created by the specific chemistry of two people who by some chance were allowed to meet and by some stroke of luck realize the possibility that is them. Doesn’t happen very often, and the regret of a missed opportunity haunts some to the end of their days.

But we felt each other long before we had tongue to express it, and even now, words fail us. But I know what she means. I can feel it. And she can feel me as well. Feel me grow stronger through her strength. Grow stronger under her gaze. Grow stronger in the faith and hope she’s handed to me. She’s given me nothing less than herself, and amazingly, there’s more of me now than ever before.