There was something great about today’s morning. It was not as monotonous as my normal days have been lately. One of my friends shared an extremely cute post in a chat group that said, “No matter what happens, see you at home.” The post, although was about how living together with the person you love is not always pumpkin spice and everything nice rather there is much more to it. A lot of people think that it is all about breakfast in bed every morning, bringing back flowers and chocolates for each other daily after work, snuggling together in bed till you both snore away into the land of magical twilight and a freshly brewed coffee mug a dinner cooked to perfection every night on your table.

In reality however, living with the person you love is about arguing over simple things like my side table’s drawer is cleaner than yours why is yours being so messy? It is the unavailability of pressed clothes in the morning while going for work in urgency or a complaint about “we do not go out together that much anymore.” It is stressing over managing the financial crisis and waking up with cold joints because you were thrown out of the blanket at night.

The message continued with an uplifting thought that despite all the differences you have, you are always eager to meet each other at home because this person is the one that you love and care for the most. You know that no matter what happens, this person would always stick by your side and would never let you go.

Amid the chaos of life, there is peace that you find in the happy moments of passionate love and intense laughter, deciding to cook dinner together but ending up ordering pizza from a random restaurant just to be disappointed again by the quality of pizza, and how it could have been made better at home, looking forward to do a movie night but end up sleeping while scrolling through the Netflix due to mutual indecisiveness, planning a trip in the morning but waking up in the afternoon because you binge-watched your favorite show a little too much last night, promising each other that we would save money from now on but making a big, useless purchase just because the offer seemed too good to be real, cleansing and scrubbing each others’ face and dipping sore feet in the salt bath together. You know for sure that the moment you would lay your head on each others’ shoulders, all of the stress and burden that you brought home would fade away. These are the instants of intimacy as we call them however, I believe that there is a supreme form of intimacy that could be labelled as ‘codependency’.

The co-dependence I believe is the raw form of intimacy. Since we all have our own imperfections and self-destructive abilities, this codependency beautifully enables us to complete each other by putting our life in a circular loop, where if one person is unable to comprehend an aspect of life, the other person is there to get a hold of the situation and figure out how to get out of any trouble, together. This eventually makes our life much more easier and a worthwhile experience. Letting the person that you love fill your loopholes and enabling you to be the best version of yourself is the best form of intimacy you can ever have.

Home is where your wi-fi connects automatically, they say. However, coming to the definition of home, in contrast to what mostly people would think of it, it does not necessarily mean the piping hot tea whistling on the rustic stove when you get home and could possibly be a messy kitchen counter and greasy dishes waiting to be washed and dried. It might not always be about a cozy, comfortable couch and crackling fireplace in a well-lit lounge, but a dripping roof and dark rooms due to electricity breakdown from the last night’s storm. Home is an emotion, not a place, it is the smile that glows up your face as you enter the front door, and the aroma of freshly cooked food along with the refreshing cold air that kisses you ‘welcome back home’, it is the people that you love and look forward to after a tiring day, not the brick walls, grand furniture and fancy wallpapers. Home is how we feel about a place not because we live there and it belongs to us, but how comfortably we can roam around in our loungewear and bare faces with halos of dark circles around our eyes, where nobody judges you, and you can laugh your lungs out with your siblings till midnight, where plans are made and cancelled till the time you go to your bed and finally fall asleep.

“Home is not about perfection, but a beautiful composition of unique, imperfect human beings living, exploring, cherishing and celebrating life altogether.”