While He Was Editing, I Fell in Love Again

While He Was Editing, I Fell in Love Again

This morning, love didn’t announce itself. It didn’t knock. It didn’t shout. It simply sat with me.

I was quiet, intentionally so; watching him from the corner of the room. Ebe had his headphones on, the big ones that mean do not disturb, I’m inside my head. His shoulders slightly hunched, eyes narrowed, fingers moving slowly but decisively. He was editing photos the way a surgeon works, zooming in, pulling back, adjusting a shade by a breath, a texture by instinct. He wasn’t just fixing images. He was listening to them.

And I thought to myself, this is it… this is love showing up again.

We are celebrating our anniversary today, yet nothing about this moment felt like a celebration in the loud, balloon-filled sense. It felt real. Ordinary. Sacred. The kind of moment people never post, but the kind that actually holds a relationship together.

People say we are picture perfect. That always makes me laugh a little.

Because Ebe and I are not neat. We are not curated. We are not cut from the same cloth.

We are different people who decided, daily; to make room. Same spirit, different expressions. Same direction, different pace. If that makes sense. We didn’t merge into one identity. We opened space. In our hearts. In our conversations. In our relationship. Space wide enough for truth, creativity, silence, questioning, faith, and growth.

When I first thought about loving someone long-term, it honestly stressed me out. This era has turned love into a gamble. Everyone is guarding themselves, keeping receipts, preparing exits. Loving deeply feels almost rebellious now.

But he didn’t rush me. He didn’t demand certainty. He sat down to understand me.

Not just as a woman, but as his woman. My softness. My fire. My contradictions. My moods that speak before my mouth does. He reads my eyes better than I read my own thoughts. He notices when I’m withdrawing before I realise I am. Sometimes he responds to me before I speak, and that still startles me in the most beautiful way.

And me? I learned his focus. His quiet intensity. The way he loves through consistency, through showing up, through details no one else notices. The way creativity is not just what he does, but how he exists.

Our love doesn’t follow a script. It doesn’t look like what we were taught love should look like, especially growing up African where love often comes with roles, expectations, and unspoken rules. We rewrote it. Gently. Boldly. Faithfully.

Our love looks like shared silence. Half-finished ideas. Prayers whispered instead of announced. Laughter that erupts at the wrong time. Disagreements that don’t end in abandonment. Wandering, and finding our way back.

Because we are not perfect. We miss steps. We misunderstand. But we return. Every time.

Today, I am grateful. Grateful for a love that is free-willing. Not measured. Not monitored. Not performed.

Grateful for living life on our own terms. Grateful for choosing each other, again and again.

Thank You, Lord, for this love.

I watched him edit photos today… and somehow, without trying, he edited my heart too.