When we first started dating, I would spend hours writing you emails and notes and thinking of all the ways I could impress you.  It was so easy then, to spend days at a time thinking of nothing but you, talking to you on the phone until you literally fell asleep and I had to yell to wake you up, only to talk some more and you’d fall asleep all over again.  I always did know I talked too much – and never have developed that piece of myself that says…enough is enough.  Let her go to bed, already.  But you never once complained and now, you just put your head on the pillow as I lull you to sleep with stories about Gus or what happened at work or fill you in on the progress of my internal debate regarding which is better, Pepsi or Ginger Ale.

After eight years together, things certainly have changed.  So much for the better, but several things less better.  Not worse, but not ideal, either.  There is just so much change that goes on in life, in each of us as individuals and in us as a couple.  I would be lying if I were to say there were never times that I had doubts, that I thought maybe we’d be better off apart.  But those, thankfully, are few and far between and it doesn’t take long before I realize how dumb it is to even think that I could make it through a moment of my life without you.  I love you.  I do.  I love you absolutely, more than my own life.  I would die a thousand deaths to spare you one minute of pain.  I would do anything for you without question.  Even that one thing.

I used to be really good at writing you love letters.  I miss that.  I miss how easy it was to gush and tell you how fucking amazing you are; how lucky I am to have you.  It isn’t that those feelings have subsided and I’m left empty of words or emotion.  Oh no.  In fact, I love you more right in this minute than I ever have in my life, more than I have loved anyone or anything or even all that combined.  My love for you is so immense that it cannot be contained.  There are no ways to measure it or to describe it adequately.  There are no words or figures or works of art, no songs, no books, no retarded interpretive dance routines, no anything that could illustrate the way you make me feel here…inside. It is immeasurable.  It is immense.  It is like how much you hate Celine Dion and Mariah Carey combined, only a bazillion times more, if that’s even possible.  Which it is, because I said so.  I think the hesitation in writing those  letters has been a reflection of where we’ve found ourselves lately…wandering without any real direction, without giving a whole lot of thought to what we have here, this wondrous connection to one another.  We forgot about how special it is because it gets so shitty with day to day life.  Though we never go a day without saying I love you, it has become quite automatic.  We say it because we’re supposed to – and we DO mean it – but we’ve somehow managed to forget to feel it, to really comprehend what those words mean.

One thing that’s been interesting over the last months is how we’ve worked to have fights.  Not really fights, but arguments and discussions.  It isn’t that we’ve tried to start them, but that we’ve been more honest with one another than we ever have before.  We’ve worked hard not to hold our feelings back to spare one another pain.  Not because we’re eager to hurt, but because it is essential to our survival as a couple.   We’ve only come to realize how important that is, and how our inability to express ourselves for fear of hurting one another or causing conflict has affected our relationship in some profound ways.  We’ve lost a bit of ourselves as individuals for the sake of us, and now we are working hard to find who we are within this relationship.  It’s a struggle now because so much is changing.  We are spending more time apart when, for so many years, we spent every spare moment we had together.  It is a challenge, but so necessary, and now the moments we have together are precious and meaningful and not filled with television and discussions about the weather or why Meryl Streep deserved that Oscar more than Sandra Bullock, which she totally did even though I like Sandra Bullock a lot.

Last week we sat in the living room and talked about our lives, about our struggles and the changes we’re going through and it was the first time in a very long time that we talked about something that mattered to us.  It was amazing, to have that connection again and to look you in the eye and see you.  Not the you on the outside with your tiny ears and crooked smile (but oh GOD DAMN, how that gets me every time), but into that part of you no one else ever gets to see.  Your heart and soul swirling inside of you and, good god Janie, it is so stunning.  You are so beautiful.

I just want you to know that even when things are bad and I question and wonder, I never stop remembering how lucky I am to know you and have you in my life. I am blessed to fall asleep and wake up beside you each and every day.  I am immensely lucky to share a life with you, especially considering how emotionally retarded I am so much of the time.  It is not an exaggeration to tell you that I didn’t quite understand what love was until you came into my life.  Yeah, sure, I’d been loved and I had loved, but not as completely and as selflessly as I have been fortunate enough to love you.  You have saved me from myself on countless occasions and I can never in a million years get you to understand what you mean to me.  Just imagine how much I love Terri Clark and then know that I love you at least 50% more than that.  It’s a lot, trust me on this.  That’s a lot of love and I think that it would be pretty cool if the three of made out together.  Please make it happen.

Janie, I love you.  I would give my life for you. My heart and soul are yours forever and there is nothing in this world that will keep me from trying each and every day to make what we have bigger and better.  And though we are an ordinary couple with ordinary ups and downs, to me we are the most brilliant thing the world has ever known.  I am so proud of you, and of us, and not a day will pass when I am not grateful for all of this love and crazy, smashed together in a life that I could not ever have imagined for myself, even on my best days.