There is not a single person in my life more important to me than you.
You are the definition of a person who is a home. From the moment I let myself fall fully into us all those years ago, I also fell into the person I was always meant to be.
I know you know saying that goes against every independent fiber of my being - but it is true.
For the first twenty-five years of my life, the most important thing to me was always being able to be entirely self-sufficient. To be able to do everything entirely on my own, financially, emotionally, and logistically. I proved time and time again that I am beyond strong enough to be able to do that.
But you showed me that I don’t have to. With you I found safety outside myself. I found unconditional love, support, and encouragement. I found a life that is somehow the most exciting version I have ever lived but filled with such a deep-rooted peace and security.
I basically won the lottery of marriage.
Growing up, the visual representation of marriage around me looked like toleration, compromise, silenced feelings and resentment. That is why it always confused me when people seemed surprised I never wanted it, or the “family package”. Why the hell would anyone?
But this thing we have has taught me endless amounts about what true partnership should look like.
We are communication, admiration, encouragement, and a mutual understanding reached through respect. I now know that marriage is not supposed to be hard, life is supposed to be hard. Your marriage should be the life raft that keeps you afloat through the tumultuous waters. Home should be your deep exhale after the world has jolted you around. This, what we have, is the center of my universe and I am fortunate enough to know how precious that is, how fragile.
People say love is a flame. Bright and warm, full of passion and intensity.
To keep a good metaphor going, I believe that if you can make it out of the fire unburned you get a beautiful work of glass art. If you throw it around like it will never break, chances are it will slip through your hands and shatter across the floor of your own home. But if you carve out a space for it, take care of it, clean it, show it off and care for it like it’s the most delicate thing you could ever hold then it can last well beyond a lifetime.
Our marriage is my hand-blown work of glass art.
& there has never been anything I felt needed my hands more than you… until her.
Now there is something we both love as much as we love each other. Something that requires even more attention than both of us combined. Before she got here, when she was just a flutter in my belly, I mourned the loss of who we were through December 2nd, 2023. There are very few moments in life when you feel the page turn, but that day felt like a book slamming shut and sliding onto a shelf.
When we became three.
I was truly terrified. Before she was here it felt like a giant question mark of what she would be, who we would become, and what life would look like overnight. A person I had never met would also get to hold our work of art. What if she dropped it?
Having a baby with you felt like creating a place for all the love between us to go. Something that is mine, but better because it is also yours. Ours.
As we navigate this new monumental venture (having absolutely no idea what we are doing) you will never shift off my priority list. I refuse to be persuaded by the ‘just waits’ or the ‘that will change’ that people so freely hurl at us. Quite frankly, I reject them.
Perfection isn’t obtainable, that is obvious, but that’s not the goal. My goal now is to show our daughter what waiting for true love looks like. How building a life and legacy with your soulmate is worth every second. Because I want her to grow up feeling this love we have radiated from our every pore, for the example we set to help her never accept less than she deserves. For her to someday find someone that loves her the way you love me.
How could I ever hope for any more than that?
