The Long Way — Interlude

No long weekends. No messages waiting when I woke up. Just mornings that began exactly as they ended, with me and my thoughts sitting across from each other.

This is where I kept returning to bell hooks’ words because they refused to let me romanticize what had already passed. In All About Love, she writes that love is not a noun but a verb, an act of will shaped by both intention and choice. That framing disrupted everything for me. If love is something we do, not something that simply happens to us, then what I experienced was not love. It was possibility. It was imagination. It was my spirit recognizing what alignment could feel like if practiced with care.

She reminds us that love cannot exist without responsibility, honesty, commitment, and respect. Not chemistry. Not intensity. Not fleeting affection. Love demands consistency, especially when it is inconvenient. When I held that definition up against my experiences, the truth became clear. We were kind to one another. We were gentle in our boundaries. We were intentional in our conversations. But we were not in a position to practice love. We were only capable of acknowledging it.

Self love is the foundation of any loving practice. We cannot show up for others in ways we refuse to show up for ourselves. That truth confronted me deeply. I had done much of the inner work, therapy, prayer, reflection, yet I was still holding onto comfort, still returning to what felt familiar, still asking God for something new while keeping space for the old. I was not empty handed, but I was not open either.

The dream was not love. It was an invitation.

An invitation into a question I did not yet know how to answer. Was I truly ready to practice love, or had I only learned how to recognize it from a distance?

The space between what almost was and what eventually came next was not romantic. It was not poetic. It was quiet, heavy, and often lonely. The summer ended, the excitement faded, and I was left with myself. No distraction. No anticipation. No one to project onto. Just the work.

And if I am being honest, I did not feel sure anywhere in my life. God was stripping me bare at every angle. Work became unstable. The one area that had always grounded me, always given me a sense of control and identity, started to spiral. I felt lost, unsure of my place as a nurse and uncertain about what was next for my career.

Work slowing down felt like punishment at first. I had always attached my sense of stability to being needed, being competent, being certain of my next shift. When that certainty thinned, I felt exposed. But the quiet I resented became the very thing that steadied me. With fewer distractions, fewer excuses, fewer places to hide, I found myself in my Bible not out of obligation but out of hunger. Therapy sessions shifted too. I was not only expressing my needs anymore. I was listening. I was opening myself to be taught. I had the clarity to see patterns without defending them, to sit with conviction without spiraling into shame. The dryness of travel nursing that I thought was loss was actually space. Space to hear God more clearly. Space to prepare for the life I had been asking for.

At times, though, I was not sure if I was growing or just watching parts of my life fall apart at the same time.

It was a season of losing more than I understood. Friendships were stretching and quietly unraveling at the same time. The saying that friendship breakups hit harder than romantic ones felt painfully true. The thought that I might have been a part of the unraveling shattered me even more than the shift itself. But the shedding was necessary to show up differently in my life than I ever had before.

The thing about God is that He does not just deal with the present. He searches the heart. Every corner. Every inch that does not reflect Him. Every place still shaped by survival. Which is why, in the middle of navigating my current friendships, career, and love life, God was also confronting me about things from years ago, proof that He holds no concept of time.

That season alone was not just about my romantic desires. It was about facing the unhealed version of myself, the damage she caused, and the parts of her that needed to be disciplined, softened, and ultimately transformed.

This was the part no one sees. The part that does not make for a good story because it does not move quickly.

There were afternoons when I would call my sis Grace and say, “I do not know what to do.” Not dramatically. Not urgently. Just honestly. We talked every other day at one point, sometimes daily, deconstructing the same questions from different angles. She did not fix anything. She just listened. She reminded me of who I was when I started doubting myself. She let me wrestle my thoughts without rushing me toward answers.

Some days obedience looked like not calling the wrong person and instead calling the right one.

Around that same time, I brought Hendrix home. He was small, stubborn , and completely dependent on my consistency. Loving him required structure, patience, and showing up whether I felt steady or not. In caring for him, I realized maturity is not always loud. Sometimes it looks like responsibility you choose daily. And in the quiet, he became both comfort and a reminder that love is practice long before it is promise.

I went to therapy even when I did not feel like talking. I prayed without eloquence, sometimes without expectation. I sat with questions I could not answer yet and resisted the urge to fill the silence with familiarity. Some days obedience looked like doing nothing at all.

I questioned whether obedience was healing or simply loneliness dressed in faith.

I kept returning to bell hooks during this time, not because her words were comforting, but because they were honest. They challenged me. If love is a verb, then I had to ask myself what I was rehearsing when no one was watching. It was no longer theoretical. It was no longer just about romance. Who was I when it came to love with myself, my family, and my friends?

Self work did not look like constant growth. It looked like grief. Grief for versions of myself that survived the only way they knew how. Grief for relationships I outgrew before I was ready to let them go. Grief for the timing I could not control. There were days when healing felt less like progress and more like endurance.

I learned how uncomfortable it is to sit with myself without numbing, without romanticizing, without escape. I noticed how often I reached for certainty when God was simply asking me to trust. How quickly I wanted clarity when He was inviting consistency instead. This season stripped away my urgency and exposed my impatience.

And still, something was forming.

Slowly, I became more honest. About what I wanted. About what I could no longer accept. About the ways I had confused intensity for intimacy and familiarity for safety. I stopped asking when and started asking who I needed to become.

Looking back, I can see that the in between was not empty. It was preparation. Not for a person, but for a way of loving that could actually be sustained. What felt like stagnation was really alignment catching up to my prayers.

That is what carried me forward. Not certainty. Not readiness. Just a quiet willingness to stay present while God did what only time and obedience can do.

I did not know yet what was waiting on the other side of that obedience. But I knew this time, whatever met me would meet a version of me willing to practice love, not just recognize it.

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Growth rarely announces itself, but it always leaves evidence. If this interlude finds you in your own quiet season, stay. There is more forming than you can see. And even if it does not reflect your story, I hope it remind you that quiet seasons still count.

If this interlude resonated with you, share it with someone who may need it. Your reflections are welcome here, leave a comment below. 🤍

Until you next dose,

Tajaè Monique