Photo credit – https://brokenbelievers.com/2016/12/17/do-you-really-love-me/do-you-love-me/

“Do you even love me?”

I felt my heart drop into my shoes and break. It was asked with such uncertainty. Did they really doubt it so much that they had to ask that question?

“Do you really not know?” I whispered.

“You never say it!” was the protest.

I realized then. It was true. In a big way, we often have convinced ourselves (or been trained) to hear love and to only hear love. But don’t we have four other senses, too? This person, this one who meant so much to me. They waited so intently to hear three specific words that they missed the abundant translations of it that I tried to convey every single day.

They didn’t or maybe couldn’t see my love when I took their car to get serviced before the winter’s first snap and snow.

They couldn’t taste my love in the favorite recipe that I learned to surprise them. (And all the burnt failures I hid in the trash out back.)

They couldn’t smell my love when I filled the sink with their favorite flowers so that we could place them all over their abode.

They didn’t feel my love when I held their hand, kissed their knuckles or shoulder, stroked their hair back, or tucked them gently into bed when sick or exhausted.

They had been taught and trained and could only believe love was real if they hear it and only when they heard it. The tree had to fall in order to make a sound. But do not trees also rustle, rumble, groan, snap, and sigh?

“Do you even love me?”

I reached out and took their hand as gently as I could.

“Yes. Yes, I do. I am telling you all the time.”