Swati M.
Photography by Lydia Troupe
If you're reading this: you are love and you are light.
My first semester at Tech, I was a fallen star, newly transferred from UGA and felt so lost, so cold, so alone. I sat next to apple interns, google interns, soon-to-be start-up millionaires and in the midst of it all, I was locked in office hours asking the simplest of questions about accessing variables from objects in java.
I called my mom crying. I was doomed, trapped, never going to make it here. A meteor crashed landed on earth, miles away from civilization. I burned too bright, aimed too high, and fell too far.
But I didn't come from nothing and my mother would not let me forget it. My mother is a force and she would not allow me to erase the names of those before me. She named me after the brightest star in the north sky, and she promised, my light would not die. She came to this country and could not understand the better half of what store clerks yammered away at her in crowded grocery stores. She came to this country at twenty-three, not much older than me. She says that when she sees me, she sees all that her younger self could be.
I am a girl, standing at the feet of the world, asking for a simple favor–that the world be kind, good, and gentle. We are but humans and we have suffered enough.
Now and then I find myself asking, what is love, where might I find it, how might I hold on to love while it slips away like silt in my hands? One minute love is there and not a second later, disappears, leaving me feeling it was never mine at all.
If you're reading this, love is everywhere. Love is not what you find when you are looking. Love sneaks up on you, surprises you with gelato after shoulder-wracking sobs, leaves the last cup of your favorite flavor of yogurt at your desk, and sends you surprise good luck texts before work presentations. Love finds you in empty subway cars and sudden compliments on the street. Love is mini blizzards from Dairy Queen and laughing so hard you cry before the first day of every new semester. Love is bouquets for new best friends and half-drank cups of tazo passion fruit tea. Love is Tech Green on Friday afternoon under a gentle Spring breeze, the sunlight haze putting us all in a temporary daze. Love is autumn leaves and flower petals drifting down in front of your feet. Love is your namesake glimmering down on you one fateful night in Madison Square park.
Love is gentle, love is kind, and one day soon she will be mine. Love does not ask of you the world, but brings the world to your feet. Love always brings the right people to your eyes and the right hands to hold yours in the dark. Love walks with you under city lights and is a shoulder to rest your head upon.
When love first found me, I was just a child. Love was in the eyes of the nurses who pressed belief into my mother. She was in the eyes of my third grade teacher who told me the pen would always be in my hand. Love was my last English professor telling me to *just write* because words are a path straight to the heart and the universe always makes space for sincerity. Love is best friends calling at any hour of the night and sending safe flight texts before I take off to another new city.
Love is graph theory, finding the shortest path to your heart. Love is Occam's razor–the simplest solution and is somehow in some way always right in front of you. Sometimes so simple it goes missed or overlooked, but never gone, not completely. Love is a cycle, always starting and ending again. it is energy that cannot be created or destroyed, only changed: lost and found again.
Love is not the fourteenth of February, love is every day, it is everywhere, it is always, it is in you and it is in me.
If you're reading this, all of your lost love will be found again.
If you’re reading this, all your love comes from you and it will find a new home again, and this time it will be you, I promise.
If you are reading this: *I’m* glad *you’re* here.
How lucky we are to be made of stardust–you and I. And we are so lucky to have stayed alive.
Swati M. (she/her), Georgia Tech
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