He's Thunderstorms

Loving him feels like walking through a landscape that is both beautiful and unpredictable.

There are days when the world between us is calm. The sun warms our hearts, and we move around each other with an ease that feels meant to be, like we are walking along a quiet beach where every footprint matches the other. Days where the tide brushes over our feet as we chase each other along the shore, laughing until our sides ache, splashing water in each other’s faces. Days where we dance beneath dark clouds, raindrops falling like tiny kisses on our faces, and we spin in circles, fingers interlocked, until we are dizzy with joy as our laughter mingles with the rumble of distant thunder. Like we are right where we are meant to be.

And then there are the other days.

The days when something in him shifts and the mood in the room changes without warning. His voice gets sharper, his patience thinner, and suddenly I feel myself becoming a problem instead of a person. I can feel him trying to provoke me into anger, as though if he can pull a storm out of me, he won’t have to face his own. And I hate that I fall for it. I rise to it and get pulled into his storm. It isn’t cruelty—I know him, and he’s not cruel—but these moments still land like a cold wind in my heart.

On those days, my emotions feel like a tsunami—drowning in my own feelings, crashing against the walls of my chest, searching desperately for a shore that won’t crumble beneath them. Sometimes, I gather up my bitterness into thundering waves and crash back, waves fighting the wind. Other times, I feel myself shrinking, swallowing words in like seawater, trying to be small enough not to provoke the storm in him.

And yet, even with all of this, something fragile but real keeps me there. Something quiet. Maybe it’s the way he comes back after the storm, a little sheepish, almost shy, as if he knows he’s been too rough with the world and is trying to soften again. Maybe it’s the way he sometimes holds me with tenderness, the way his hands linger on mine, not with grand gestures, but as if he is afraid to let me slip through his fingers and get carried out to sea.

Truthfully, he is not just his storms, and I am not just my waves. We are just two humans carrying bruised pasts into a place that demands gentleness that neither of us was given unconditionally. There is an angst which embeds itself in our love—frustration, fear, a longing that aches. But there is also the gentle light on a distant horizon. The kind you see after a long night, when you’re not sure if the sky is actually brightening or if your eyes are just tired. Because there will always be storms and tsunamis, but the storms pass, and the waters grow calm again. And when the sun rises over the horizon, its soft rays will remind us why we still dance in the rain and dive into the seas. I will always love thunderstorms, and hopefully, he will always love the sea, and in that, we can find each other again.

Sometimes someone will ask me, “Why do you stay? Why don’t you leave?”
And then a conversation with my friend echoes softly:
“You don’t need to explain yourself, as long as you’re happy.”
”Most of the time, yes.”
”That’s life anyway”

It’s not a movie-scene answer. It does not erase the fear, the tides, or the storms. But it reminds me that happiness is not without some sadness, that love is not without some pain, and that staying does not mean losing myself. And more than that, staying is who I am. I am not, and never will be, the kind of person who hides away because it started storming. Falling in love is a feeling; loving is a choice. And I will always choose to stay with him.

Ask me again, “Why do you stay? Why don’t you leave?”, and next time I will answer, “Because love stays.”

And you might argue that love is not enough.

But it is enough for me. And it is enough that I keep walking.
Enough that I stay.
Enough that I still believe we can find our way, not to avoid the storms, but to survive them without losing each other under the waves.