I wish I’d met you sooner. Because my life changed so much for the better when we got together. I stopped thinking I was the only one like me. Stopped thinking I was defective — like so many other people had told me I was.
For you were the same way. You were so much like me. And you were wonderful.
And not only were you wonderful, not only did you make me feel like I wasn’t alone for the first time in my life, you had this uncanny way of making me better. I did the same for you, too. We complemented one another beautifully. Encouraged one another to be responsible, take care of ourselves. To stop putting off the important things we needed to do in order to thrive.
I had never experienced this before either. Before you, a lot of my relationships were about me supporting the other person without getting much in return. I often felt myself dragged down by my relationships — financially, emotionally, and otherwise — and not lifted up by them.
But you changed all of that. And I did the same for you.
“I wish I’d met you sooner,” I say to you.
You shake your head. I think you’re going to tell me that it’s a pointless hypothetical. That it’s silly to play those kind of “what if” games. Because it could only happen one way, the way it did, so why torture yourself about alternatives.
But that’s not what you say at all. And instead you say, “I don’t. We wouldn’t have been ready for each other.”
And as I think about it, I know exactly what you mean. Perhaps we had to experience heartbreak to really appreciate what we have. We had to go through what incompatibility felt like in order to understand how much sense we make together, that what we have is rare.