To Kirby 

The time between you entering my thoughts is a pulse. It echos and mimics the increased heartbeat I feel as your remembered existence enters me. That all exists in that moment, the rest of what I write below is what exists in all the other times.

It took time to feel all of this (the following) but it recently showed itself to me... the exact moment of realization sent to me a spiraling of ideas; new thought pathways ran across my brain, awakening answers to questions I had forgotten to ask myself for years long before we met; of who I am, what tastes I like, what direction to take, how happiness is found, and what happiness for me is. And with that, I can now see the care and consideration you had for us, you and me, during this year. It was hard to see that till now months later.

The sense of fulfillment I found in life with you was so nourishing I forgot to feel the other parts of ‘me’. After I had the need to search, then to question, and eventually to question such a basic question about my life. I missed the target so many times after we didn’t spend our days together; riding around on motorcycles looking for adventure (add guitar riff under that sentence), trying to keep moving - in different states, different hotels, and then different ideas of life. It wasn’t till I stopped searching all the external elements that I felt ‘it’. I have had a sense of reawakening of focus and started to ask myself ‘what do I like, where do I want to be, how do I feel happy for me’, and how much knowing those answers bring so much to others around me.

To say how much my initial reaction to this new chapter was '‘off’… (I noticed something that demonstrates just how much my immediate response to your decision was clouded by my emotions, the lyrics I wrote that first week “I’ll live inside your mind”, putting you as the protagonist and me a ghost of a person to haunt some thoughts, was wrong.) In reality, now, it’s you that lives inside my mind; I see you everywhere, in people’s mannerisms, the colors I now have a new appreciation to notice thanks to you, in the scents I notice walking through a neighborhood (which you would normally lean into), in the music I listen to, in each pause between other moments, in the most common scenarios each day… you’re there.

In all honesty, I think that all couples should go through this process ‘of self’ every 5 years (let’s say) to reawaken themselves and not forget how precious our own ability to find individual happiness is in the sole decisions of our time. 

There are only 39 minutes between our two times of day. 2:13 still holds a special time to think of you at that moment, there are so many of our little fun things in life we found together which I still notice and enjoy.

I’ve discovered a lot in this time, that building a home, a business that funds the type of existence I like without holding me in one place, pushing myself in creating each day, and discovering things that push me forward, has given me a solid foundation to think of the future. I know a lot more of myself now, I know I want kids, I know I want to feel loved and to love as intensely as I do naturally, I know I want to cherish moments as if they won’t last forever; I know I miss you.

There are of course a million words to fit here…. but I’ll leave the most unsaid, untyped, maybe you know them like we just knew in a taco store moment in silence.

This New Years, when the clock strikes midnight, I’ll imagine you walking into the room, around a corner, with the most realistic imagination I can conjure; and I will see how my body, mind, and heart react to that sight. I haven’t looked at any photos of us in a longest time, it hurt before, but I have today and it surprises me. I see you… and I do love you.

Always.

From a little town in France… where you always have someone to reach out to for anything. A promise I made a long time ago and it’s a promise I will always keep for you.