My love, from the day I met you, I knew there was something special about you. I knew in the first pounding of my heart in my chest that you had a power over me that not many had ever managed to hold. I knew in stolen glances and fervid denial that you were the waves to crash upon my shore and wash away the houses of sand I'd built. You pulled me out into your depths and brought me under; I have never experienced such a glorious drowning. Baptized again in a new love, I have spent these last years faithful to the love I found in the darkest of solitude and sadness. You've always been the light to break through my inner dark, to bring my head up for air and fill my lungs with a renewed lust for life. It does me no good to wonder what live would be like if we'd never met, because that day was predetermined long before either of us was born.

Through no shortage of hard times, we have created a new art in the act of holding on. Of having and keeping faith when we might have deceived ourselves into thinking we'd long ago abandoned it. I know the temptation to over-romanticize will always exist with our story, but I can't be bothered to douse myself with reality when the reality I feel is the weight of your chest against my back at night or the graze of your fingers over my arm when we're sitting quietly and can't bear not to touch. My reality is the memory of how I cried and prayed the night you contacted me, bargaining with God to allow you to come back. My reality is the feeling of my stomach falling to my toes when I saw you again, the electricity that threatened to set me on fire when we touched. Maybe it's hyperbolic and unrealistic to think that we're the greatest story ever (and almost never) told, but it's the story that keeps my soul alive. It's ours. It can't be taken away.

There are many adventures left to embark upon. Raising four children. Compromising and tolerating one another when our views diverge. Creating art and music and memories. Taking two parts and remembering how much better they fit as one. I couldn't ask for a better partner to be on this path with. There is no one who ties together the parts of my spirit the way you do, my love. Thank you for always coming home and always letting me come home. Thank you for the way you compliment me and challenge me and drive me to be better. Thank you for your unconditional support and your thirst for life that rejuvenates my own. There isn't a life I want to imagine that doesn't have you in it.

I love you. Today, tomorrow. Forever.