The second I met you I knew something had changed as if the plates under the crust of this Earth have shifted and rearranged to create a wholly different world. What I didn’t know was how big of an impact you would imprint on me, even when you’re away.

When I first saw you, you were so nervous and excited that it warmed my embittered heart - I never imagined I could have that kind of effect on someone. It came to be that the more I saw of you, the more I had to see you. Eventually, I couldn’t go a day without seeing your wide toothy grin or the freckles that dotted your cheeks just below the frame of your glasses.

It was nearly impossible to ignore how the room would illuminate the second you stepped foot into it, and how I would brighten in turn. Whenever you were near, I was the best possible version of myself simply because I thought the world of you and decided you deserved the best of everything the world (and in a lesser way, my own self) had to offer.

But as time passed, bits and pieces of myself would show through the rips of the veil I cautiously put up in front of everyone, and the previously obscured parts of me I attempted to hide were put on full display. And yet, you stayed.

You stayed, you held my hand and promised to stay by my side.

You stuck with me at my worst because you wanted to see me at my best.

I’ve fallen more and more for you since then until it finally occurred to me that I was all in, that this was real and it was happening and to this day I cannot be more thankful that it was you. You were my best friend, privy to all my little quirks and eccentricities - how I make my bed in a particular way, the music I don’t share with anyone else (but you), my intense love for fuzzy socks, how I only eat only the cookie parts in those Domino’s cookie brownies, how I write stories that I never finish.

And in the same way I collected all of your lovable idiosyncrasies - the way your eyes light up and you use your hands when you talk about something you love, how you belt out the words to your favorite songs in the car, how animated and expressive you are, especially when you’re telling a story, how you keep the teddy bear your father had as a child on your bed.

You knew what made me laugh and set me off, even better than I did. And more than that, you were my soulmate.

I couldn’t imagine trusting or loving anyone as much as you.

You’re the kind of person someone meets once in a lifetime that sweeps in and irrevocably changes everything they ever knew or thought about the world.

You dull the stars with your shine.

Everyone always has that one great love of their life and you are mine. Words cannot express the amount of gratitude I have that you’re in my life and every day I send silent prayers to whatever higher power that might be listening that you’ll be in my future. No one else compares to you - not now, not ever.