I Hope Love Sneaks Up on You: Embracing Slow-Burn Connections

Hey you,

I hope love sneaks up on you. Not the kind that crashes into you all at once, leaving you breathless and disoriented. Not the kind that feels like a free fall, with nothing to hold onto, no time to make sense of it before you hit the ground. I hope you catch yourself falling instead. I hope you notice it midway—Oh. I admire this about them. I admire them. Like a secret your heart has been keeping, one your mind only just now stumbles upon.

I hope you get to love someone through a layer of friendship first. That it happens slowly, naturally, in a space where you feel safe enough to just be. No pressure, no second-guessing, no performing. I hope you let them see you—the way you overthink sometimes, the way your voice wavers when you're unsure, the way your stomach protrudes after a meal, the way you stumble over your words when you're excited, the way you work so hard you barely have enough time to look presentable.

I hope you let them see your scars, your flaws, every part of you you’ve tried to soften or hide. And I hope, in the quiet of that friendship, you realize they still look at you the same.

I hope love finds you in the moments that don’t feel like love at first. When your mouth is full of food and you’re talking too fast, when you belch a little too loudly and laugh it off, when you're ugly crying because of how tough life has been, when you’re venting about how exhausting life is. When you’re sitting side by side in silence, not saying anything, just existing. I hope it happens when you’re you, when your truest self slips through the cracks of self-consciousness, when you forget to filter or fix yourself—and they see it. Really see it. And they stay.

I hope your next love is a slow burn, something steady, something that doesn’t ask you to rush but doesn’t leave you waiting so long that you start to doubt it. Not something agonizingly drawn out, but something that builds—something that has roots before it grows. No lust, no overwhelming desire at first, just a pull. A pull to understand them, to know how their mind works, to hear their thoughts just because they’re theirs. A friendship so deep that love has no choice but to bloom from it.

And then, one day, when you least expect it, I hope you feel it settle in your chest. That quiet, certain realization—Oh. I’ve fallen. And I hope, in that moment, you smile. Because this time, love didn’t knock you over. It caught you.

When next love finds you, I hope it comes in shape of a friend who makes you feel accepted, seen, heard, protected.. And it stays.