And Every Last One of You

There are people who will drift in and out of your life like blundering smoke, and then there are all of you, who linger like a sudden song getting stuck in your head, soft and steady, refusing to fade.

This is for you.

For the way you've learned the language of my silences, how you've sat beside me when my thoughts tangled into something nameless - you didn't demand clarity, or turn away.  You listened - not just to what I said, but to everything I couldn't. And somehow, that feels like being understood in its purest form.

For the way you love me with intention, not assumption. The way you ask, and ask again, as if I am in a story still worth reading. You trace the small details I forget to mention, hold onto the fragments of who I am, and return them to me like something precious. There is something deeply romantic about being known this way, about being seen not as something fixed, but as something becoming.

For the tenderness of your acceptance. You have witnessed me in unfinished states - uncertain, unpolished, 95lbs and hair falling out the way temperatures drop at night, in the quiet mess of growing - and still, you chose to stay. Not despite it, but with it. You made space for all of my contradictions, like they belonged. Like I belonged.

And for the way you show up, again and again. In ways both loud and quiet. In late night conversations that stretch into delicate territories, in ephemeral messages that somehow carry weight, in the gentle gravity of your presence. Loving you, being loved by you, feels less like a moment and more like a rhythm - steady, grounding and real. This is what holds me together in the lost moments, the moments where I feel ready to implode. 

Without you, I would be a walking perpetual guttural howl.

So my offering back to you is this, imperfect but full: gratitude, admiration, and something that leans, just slightly, into romance. Because there is a beauty in the way we have chosen each other. Not all at once, but slowly and deliberately. Something meant to last. 

Thank you. I love you. 

I Forgot This Place Existed

You know when you suddenly get that film across your eye that blurs your vision, so you rub your eyes to clear it out but the blurriness stubbornly persists and now your eye is irritated from the attention? That's how the last several months have been. Dazed but focused. Tired but spirited. I've cultivated a level of exhaustion that tends to come from being pulled in too many directions at once. 

My days are stitched together by a full-time job that takes up more of me than I'd like to admit. Meetings, deadlines, emails that never really stop... by the time I get into my car, I feel like I've already given away the best parts of my energy. And inevitably the second shift starts: errands, dinner, homework, cleaning cleaning cleaning, listening and simultaneously pretending to listen. The hours I'm supposed to feel most present are the ones where I feel most split. I look at my kids and feel this deep aching pull - like I'm missing them even while I'm engaging with them. Like there's a version of me they deserve that I can't quit reach anymore. 

Over the last year I've tried to be more of who I used to be, who I read about in this very blog. Not always happy, but I was always there. Steady. Loving fiercely and being loved fiercely, and I had attained it, always. And now, I ache for connection -- to be seen without the burden of translation, to be understood in the quiet, unspoken places. I want to inhabit my life fully, not as a distant observer from a window, but as someone warm in the room, breathing in the same moments. And yet, I hold these desires together - the reaching outward, the turning inward - only to find that they blur at the edges - two oceans crashing together. I feel I've lost the emotional capacity to continue masking my unhappiness and people are starting to notice. Unwanted attention and I'm drowning while gripping a buoy. Nothing makes sense anymore.