Pushing it down and praying

And at every table, I'll save you a seat

I’ve been listening to Pushing It Down and Praying in the background of my days, the song feels less like a narrative and more like a feeling you recognise before you can name it. To me, it sounds like self-doubt living inside love, like holding something good while quietly preparing for it to be taken away. It’s about guilt, the quiet guilt that comes when things feel peaceful and you don’t trust peace to last. Like pushing feelings down not because they hurt, but because letting them rise feels dangerous.

I’m dating someone now, and even writing that makes me feel cautious. I’ve learnt to be wary of sentences that begin with ‘it’s different’, because they usually end in disappointment, but this time there are no fireworks to justify my certainty. There’s no chaos, no urgency, no sense of being consumed. It’s just calm, and that calm has been strangely confronting. We spend our time walking around town without plans, cooking together, sleeping far too long because we’re both exhausted university students. He lives an hour away by train, not far enough to be dramatic but far enough that effort matters. It’s the first time I’ve dated someone not from the same place as me, which means there are no shortcuts or shared assumptions, I have to trust him. And trust, I’m realising, is quieter and much more frightening than intensity ever was.

There was a night after a nine-hour shift when he came over late and my body finally gave in. I cried without really knowing why, the kind of crying that feels heavier than the moment itself. He didn’t seem alarmed or unsure. He just told me to let it out and pulled me into a tight hug. I remember how unfamiliar that felt, being held without explanation. Growing up, I learned to swallow things neatly, to cry in showers where no one could hear me, to keep my emotions private and manageable. Having someone stay with me in that softness, without trying to move past it, felt like learning how to rest in a way I never had before. In past relationships, my tears were met with panic or distance, as if vulnerability was something inconvenient or fragile. This time, someone stayed. This time, I was allowed to fall apart without being left.

It’s in moments like that that I realise how much my understanding of love was shaped by absence. By being used to asking for less. By mistaking intensity for care, and endurance for depth. With him, I don’t feel like I have to prove anything. I don’t have to explain why I’m tired, or quiet, or emotional. I feel seen in a way that doesn’t demand performance. I can exist gently. I can be held without being fixed. And that kind of love feels almost radical to someone who grew up believing love was something you survived rather than something that softened you.

Still, the song lingers, that instinct to push things down and pray they don’t surface. I feel it when things are good, when calm stretches on for too long and I start waiting for it to end. I’m so used to love feeling conditional that being given it freely makes me suspicious, like I should brace myself or feel guilty for how easy it is. But maybe this is what love looks like when it isn’t trying to hurt you. Maybe it’s quieter than I imagined. Maybe it doesn’t arrive with warnings or fireworks or destruction. As Valentine’s Day approaches, I find myself writing about love again, but this time it isn’t about longing or loss. It’s about learning to let myself be held, and trusting that gentleness doesn’t mean it will disappear.

Much love,

Hannah

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