To the person I love, I write this in honor of you.

Not because of Valentine’s Day or some anniversary but because you deserve to know how loved you are. The world deserves to know how amazing you are and how much you mean. How you brighten my day; day in and day out. How the years fly by like seconds and how each millisecond feels like a beautiful picture. Frozen in time yet moving as fast as it possibly can. How you manage to make every single day a memory, even when we’re in the same routine. Wake up together, breakfast, start our day, maybe lunch, a super late dinner, then bed. Every one of them feels fresh and new; almost like watching my favorite TV show or movie for the first time again.

Our life together, from the minute it first began, has been a constant rollercoaster. I entered our relationship an insecure nervous mess of a human being. Now, I’m still that same mess but with a few major differences. I wake up every morning knowing there’s someone out there who loves me and will be there at the end of the day no matter what. I go through my day excited to just unpack it all with you. Was that a sentence fragment? I don’t know, I’m sure you’ll tell me when you read this.

Anyway, just when I think life couldn’t possibly get any better I enter the “you and me” dimension. When we’re alone, everything else fades out. Everything else cancels out. Ordering food is always an adventure in and of itself. It takes us about an hour to figure out what the hell we even want in the first place. After working through the possibilities we lament over the fact that only three (good) places near us actually deliver when we get a minute to do so.

All of my time with you has been magical, every second in and of itself has been a miracle. Even if there’s some disagreement there’s always, always a way to talk it out. I love you and I love us. Aristotle (or someone, I don’t care) once said that love is a single soul trapped in two bodies. I find that to be very true because with each day I find a new piece of myself stitching to you and vice versa. Which as I type it out sounds disgusting. But what is love if not disgustingly beautiful?

Jokes aside, you give my life a drive. You give me something to strive to, keep me on course. You inspire me to be the best possible version of me and I hope I do the same for you and then some. Thank you for making me feel the way I do. Thank you for everything. And I mean everything. The good, the bad (which is practically nonexistent), the everything. I love you, I saw everything flash before me from the moment we met. Every laugh, every experience, every inside joke, and every element of our relationship passed before me all at once.

At the end of the day, though, I look up and stare out at the sky. All of these thoughts and hopes and predictions rushing through me. The feelings I have for you are almost ready to burst and even if it hasn’t happened yet, I know I want them all. And I know I want them with you. As I fade in and out, blinking to try and keep a migraine at bay I keep looking at the stars. Each one looking like a diamond, each one containing a new memory that is yet to be. The words flooded into my head, “idiot, ask her out already. Do it.” You walk into my peripheral view, then towards me. My eyes droop down to face you as you sit next to me. You got me pizza and water. I sit up, no wait, no. I lie down on your knee. I look up at you, into those eyes. Good Lord, those eyes. I could write a poetry compendium on them alone. As I stare intently, it all comes rushing. And I say the words nobody else who reads this could ever understand or relate to but you. “Ashley, I think I’m ready.”