I won't say that I've never felt love, and I won't say that I've never known love or how to love. But I can say that I've never learned how to love with my entire being. So much so that I would give endless days just for one more hour together.

I never knew my heart could hold so much. I never knew that I could love someone so much that I couldn’t understand how I had never felt a love like this before. I never knew that the world held so much color and I never knew that I was allowed to feel this kind of love until you showed me how.

Loving you has made me realize my passions, realize my dreams, and realize my wants. Now don’t get me wrong, I knew all of these things before and I knew my self-worth and I knew what I stood for but it was always in a foggy haze. Once I met you and learned that your love was safe, it was like all of the fog disappeared and I learned that my passions, dreams and wants could all become a reality as long as I wanted them hard enough.

Safe, I learned for the first time in a long time what it meant to feel safe. Yes, I felt safe in my house with my family, but not this kind of safe. It’s like anything and everything that could hurt me in the world not only had to go through me but go through you. It was like I had someone fighting on my team, relentlessly, and that made me feel safe no matter what battle I was facing. I felt my safe place become your arms, and I could feel you holding my heart in your hands as you cupped my face and kissed away tears.

You once told me, “You have me, though, you don’t have to face things alone anymore” and without you even being aware it shattered every wall that I had ever built. That sentence told me that you were different. It told me that when no matter what I had to face you would be there, it told me that despite my past and the things that could arise from it, you would fight with me. It told me that you were there, and you weren’t leaving.

You slowly tore down every wall that I had built around myself. Every wall that I had made sure never moved, no matter who tried to budge it, the walls stood tall. But with you, it was different. With you, the walls came crumbling down and instead of letting them crash you caught them and built a home for me with the broken pieces. You build a home for this relationship, a place that I not only feel safe, but beautiful.

I could write for hours about how your love has changed me for the better and I could write for days about how learning how to love (you) has been the greatest adventure of my life. But all I can say is thank you, thank you for not giving up, thank you for not hanging up and always calling back when I wanted to be difficult. Thank you for making sure we never go to bed upset, thank you for always taking the time to make my days special, thank you for loving me with all that you have. And thank you for letting me love you.

Love,

Your Forever & Always