Letter from the Editor

I’ve always been enamored with the idea of love. 

I’ve been dreaming about love, what it would feel like, when it would happen, and what it would mean my entire life. I’ve also always been fascinated with befores and afters. I remember the day I got my first boyfriend in middle school and going home knowing it was the first time I’d get off the bus and have a boyfriend, the first time I’d cross the threshold into my house and have a boyfriend, the first time I’d put on pajamas and have a boyfriend. It didn’t end up mattering anything at all, turns out you’re the same person at 13 with or without a boyfriend, and I’d argue it’s the same when you’re 24 or 42.

But the changes still enthralled me, and I kept charting them. It’s said that to be loved is to be changed, and I wondered what that meant. I wondered after my first kiss if I looked any different. After my first breakup I wondered if heartbreak was something worn on my sleeve, or, worse, in the middle of my forehead like an unfortunate zit. All the morning afters spent staring at myself in the mirror, seeing if I could find any love left over on my face, in the grease slicks around my nose. But like always, mar a few love bites of my youth, I was always the same girl that I had been the nights before, the days prior, the years previous. 

At times, I worried if love changed us in tragic ways. Or worse, if love changed us in irreparable ways (the dramatic word I used because I am, above all else, an insufferable English major). If love gave us permanent damage, bruises that would never quite unpurple. But, at the same time, when I looked at myself and at my life, those fears seemed small in comparison to the positive way love shaped me.  

It’s hard to explain but it feels like this: 

Love is when my mom buys me a Kit Kat every time she goes to the grocery store because they’re my favorite. Love is listening to Paul McCartney records at night. Love is the orange part of sunsets. Love is someone thinking about you. Love is when you can close your eyes and feel your soul thudding around inside you. Love is my friends and their endless patience and kindness. Love is listening. Love is bringing an extra bottle, just in case. Love is left over cologne on a pillowcase. Love is a book rec. Love is, at times, heartbreak and mascara stains. And love is, at other times, empathy and flutters in your chest. And sometimes love is just silent, wandering into your life one day and making itself at home. 

Love can be all of it, all the time.

This issue is dedicated to love, in all its forms, all its stages, all its endless wonder. And when I think about that kind of love, I think that maybe I wouldn’t mind if it irreparably changed me. I think it probably already has in many ways. 

— Rachel Loring