Love in Transit

On travelling, loss, timing, and the people who change us forever even if they don’t stay. There’s a certain kind of heartbreak that only arrives after a plane lands.

Not the dramatic kind.
Not the movie scene with tears in the rain.
The quieter kind. The kind that sits beside you in an airport café while your coffee gets cold. The kind that follows you through unfamiliar streets, reminding you that love and loss have always travelled together.

This year taught me that there is no love without loss.

Not because love is doomed.
But because love changes us. And anything that changes us asks us to let go of a previous version of ourselves.

Sometimes you lose a person.
Sometimes you lose timing.
Sometimes you lose the fantasy you created around what forever was supposed to look like.

But love still happened.
And that matters.

Travel has a strange way of exposing this. You can cross oceans thinking you’re running toward success, freedom, opportunity, healing, and suddenly find yourself sitting in a taxi in a foreign city realizing all you really wanted was connection. Human connection. A hand on your back after a long day. Someone asking if you made it home safe. Someone remembering how you take your coffee.

I think that’s why people fall in love while travelling so often. Not because airports are romantic, but because movement strips you down. You become softer. More open. Less distracted by routine. You meet people in versions of yourself that don’t exist back home.

And sometimes those loves are temporary.

The train theory explains this beautifully. The idea is that people enter your life like passengers on a train. Some ride beside you for one stop. Some for years. Some change your entire direction. But eventually, many of them step off.

That doesn’t mean they were not meant for you.

We have to stop measuring love only by permanence. Some people are meant to awaken parts of you, not stay forever. Some arrive to teach softness. Some teach boundaries. Some teach grief. Some teach you that you are still capable of feeling deeply after years of pretending you don’t.

And some… stay.

That’s the terrifying and beautiful part.

Love is a choice. Not just a feeling.

The world has romanticized chemistry so much that people forget devotion is built in ordinary moments. Choosing to communicate when it’s uncomfortable. Choosing honesty over ego. Choosing to stay curious about someone instead of assuming you already know them. Choosing someone during the unglamorous seasons of life.

Real love is less “spark” and more return.

Returning after conflict.
Returning after distance.
Returning after fear.

I think there are many forms of love we experience in one lifetime.

There is romantic love, the kind that rearranges your nervous system and makes songs suddenly make sense.

There is friendship love, where someone witnesses your becoming in real time and stays anyway.

There is family love, loud and imperfect and rooted so deeply inside you that no amount of distance can remove it.

There is creative love. The love you pour into dreams, businesses, art, purpose. The kind that keeps you awake because your soul refuses to settle.

And then there is self-love, which I’ve learned is not spa days and affirmations all the time. Sometimes self-love is leaving what hurts you. Sometimes it is loneliness. Sometimes it is rebuilding your identity after someone else became part of it.

Travel taught me this most.

You can search for love in cities, in people, in late-night conversations under unfamiliar skies. But eventually every journey circles back to you. To the relationship you have with yourself when nobody is watching.

Can you sit alone at dinner without reaching for distraction?
Can you comfort yourself without immediately seeking validation?
Can you become home for yourself first?

Because sometimes the greatest love story isn’t about finding someone. It’s about finding yourself again after losing who you were trying to be for everyone else.

Still, I remain hopeful about forever.

Not in the naive way. Not in the “perfect love” way. But in the grounded way. The intentional way.

I believe forever exists when two people continue choosing each other through evolution. Through changing cities, changing dreams, changing bodies, changing fears. I think lasting love belongs to people willing to meet each other again and again as new versions emerge.

And maybe that’s what this year has really been about.

Not chasing love.
Not escaping loss.
But understanding that both belong to the same story.

To love deeply is to risk grief.
To travel far is to risk becoming someone new.
To open your heart is to accept that not everyone is meant to stay.

But some people will leave fingerprints on your soul forever.
Some cities will feel like old lovers.
Some versions of yourself will only exist because someone once loved you well.

And honestly, that alone makes the journey worth it.