I stayed up all night for the first time in a long, long while. I can’t tell you how thankful I am.

Before you this was routine. I’d grind my teeth to dust, lie awake paralyzed with bloodshot eyes and a pounding chest, blur the lines between a bad dream and a brutal reality. I would choke on tears and screams, try to convince myself that maybe I wouldn't drown if i could make it until sleep floated me into the morning.

Before you, I would sacrifice sleep and embrace insomnia to feed a heartache that let me waste away in front of its eyes. At sunrise, I could clock out and go back to the rest of my nightmare after the circadian commute from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. the following afternoon.

No overtime. I was over time.

Sometimes that ache would forget to hide something. Usually, it didn't care enough to try. And constantly I’d try not to raise my voice but I’d lose control anyways and tear the posters off its walls and break its whiteboard and watch another little piece of an already fragile sense of self fall and shatter. I would wander as a ghost and wish with the few shreds of energy I had left that maybe, just maybe, Cloudy Night #295, 3:27 a.m. would be warmer than the wasted affection blaring at me through a shattered phone screen.

Loneliness was my relief from being alone; at least it was on my terms.

I walked the path with the blue lamps and the red bridge on accident again tonight. And I realized how distant the past is now, how infinitely better life is because of you. The lamps and the bridge fade to a purple blur. Time erases the pain and leaves dull impressions of memory.

I know it's so late/early, but I need you to know with absolute certainty that I wouldn’t be able to write this without you helping me find the voice to do it. You transformed a private little hell into countless memories of whispering until sunrise, top-down drives through ghost towns, bad coffee and better conversation, staring at skies bursting with alien constellations on beaches I never thought I’d be lucky enough to see.

Your love is neon hospitality on the side of a dark, desolate highway stretching into infinity. It’s the warmth in the blankets that makes me want to sleep with every window open on chilly fall evenings. It’s fresh warm socks and French toast with powdered sugar, the glow in the gas lamps I’m gonna kiss you under when we make it to Paris.

You helped me become so much more than I ever thought I could be. You gave me a life beyond lifelessness, hope beyond hopelessness. I love you so much it kills me, yet every time you say it too it brings me back to life. I refuse to imagine a future without you.

I don't need sleep when life with you is the best dream I'll ever know.