There are days even now when I wake up in the morning and see you lying next to me. And even though it’s been years that we’ve been together, I feel that burst of joy that I did the first time I spent the night.
It doesn’t happen every day, mind you. But it happens on some mornings when it’s just barely light out. When I can barely see the shape of you lying there. On the kind of mornings that feel like they’re there for me to enjoy alone. A bit of stolen time before the rest of the world gets up.
It’s on these mornings that I see you most clearly. It’s on these mornings that I remember who you were to me before I really knew you. And on top of that image, my first impression of you, I can superimpose the richness of everything I’ve learned about you since then.
Dear one, I had high hopes for you back then. High hopes for us. And I can honestly say that I was way off the mark back then when I felt so optimistic — but in an entirely unexpected direction.
You were better than I ever imagined you would be. _We _were better than I ever imagined we could be. You showed me love that I didn’t know was possible before I experienced it. One that most people don’t know even exist — let alone that it could ever happen to them.
And no matter what happens from here on out, no matter what this chaotic troubled world throws at us next, I will be forever be grateful. Grateful to know such an amazing person so well, yes. But also grateful to love this hard and this authentically — to explore something with an intensity that leaves us both changed and a stability that drives us to achieve what our insecurities said we never could.