Powerless
Baby,
When you love someone, you have no control.
That's what love is.
Being powerless.
And God, you make me powerless.
Not weak.
Never weak.
Just completely unable to negotiate with my own heart.
I can reason through almost anything.
I can build things.
Fix things.
Plan things.
Overthink things until I have examined every possible outcome from every possible direction.
I'm a Virgo, baby.
You know how my brain works.
And if you don't, you do now.
I can find a reason to question almost anything.
Except you.
Because somehow, little by little, you broke through every defense I ever had.
Every wall.
Every piece of armor.
Every reason I could have invented to protect myself.
You didn't tear them down all at once.
You just kept showing up.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Until eventually I looked around and realized there was nothing left between my heart and you.
And maybe that's what happens when a woman chooses a man the way you chose me.
Eventually, he stops wondering if she will.
Eventually, he stops protecting himself from her.
Eventually, he just loves her.
And baby, I love you.
I have been thinking about something lately.
I think for a while I was looking backward too much.
Trying to understand everything.
Trying to understand what happened.
Why it happened.
What was happening now.
What I missed.
What you knew.
What I didn't know.
And there will be a time for some of those conversations.
There are things you will tell me someday.
There are things I will tell you.
There are pieces of this year that we will probably sit somewhere together one night and finally put into words.
But I don't want the past to become the place where our love lives.
I don't want everything that happened to us to receive more of our future than it has already taken.
I want healing.
I want forward.
I want us.
Because I've realized something.
The memories behind us matter.
They are part of why this became so difficult to break.
All those mornings.
All those days.
All those nights.
All those stupid conversations.
All those little routines nobody else would understand.
All those moments that looked completely ordinary while we were living them and somehow became precious once they were gone.
They built something.
They built us.
But baby, memories are not the reason I want you.
They're simply the proof that I already know what life feels like when you're in it.
And I want more.
More mornings.
More drives.
More nights where neither one of us is ready to hang up.
More ridiculous conversations that somehow become important because they're happening with you.
More moments where you're beside me and absolutely nothing remarkable is happening.
Your shoulder against mine.
Your knee touching mine underneath a table.
Your hand finding mine without either of us thinking about it.
You laughing before everyone else understands what you're laughing about.
Me hearing your voice from another room and knowing exactly where home is.
That's what I want.
The ordinary things.
With you.
And maybe that's what I've been trying to explain this whole time.
I don't want someone.
I want you.
There is a difference.
I don't want a woman's hand.
I want your hand.
I don't want someone sitting beside me.
I want to look over and see you.
I don't want somebody texting me because something happened.
I want you reaching for your phone because something happened and somehow, without thinking about it, I was the first person you wanted to tell.
I want you to see something ridiculous and think of me.
I want to hear my name differently when you say it because you're happy to see me.
I want you walking beside me.
Not behind me.
Not following me.
Beside me.
Right where you belong.
And I want to be wanted by you.
Not because you need something from me.
Not because I can solve something.
Not because I can provide something.
Not because I can build you a house or buy you something beautiful or make your life easier.
I want there to be moments where you have absolutely no reason to choose me except for that quiet little thing inside of you that says,
Him.
And maybe that's why your choosing me has affected me so deeply.
Because you keep doing it.
You keep coming back.
Even when I go quiet.
Even when there are days between my words.
Even when life gets busy and I disappear into work for a while.
Somehow, my little birdie keeps finding the window.
And baby, I see you.
I think you know that by now.
I love that meticulous little part of you that somehow keeps me updated on your world.
I love when you come back.
And lately, more than anything, I love that it feels like you're coming back to our bond.
Back to me.
And I'm coming back to you too.
Maybe differently now.
Softer.
Less interested in fighting every battle.
Less interested in understanding every detail immediately.
More interested in protecting the thing underneath all of it.
Us.
Because I think that's where healing begins.
Not by pretending nothing happened.
Not by forgetting.
Not by becoming blind.
But by finally deciding that what happened behind us does not get to decide everything waiting in front of us.
Baby, I could spend pages telling you about the business.
About what's changed.
What's grown.
What's gotten better.
What I'm working on.
What I'm building.
And someday I'll tell you all of it.
But those things aren't the story.
They're tools.
The business matters because of what it allows us to build.
The work matters because of the life it can give us.
The long days matter because somewhere in my mind there is still a woman whose fingerprints I want all over the plans.
You.
God, you motivate me in ways I don't even know how to explain.
Sometimes I am exhausted and somehow thinking about our future gives me another hour.
Another idea.
Another reason.
Another push.
And sometimes when I'm working on the future, I probably look absent from yours.
I'm not.
Baby, I don't forget about you.
You should know that by now.
I carry you through my day just like I know you carry me through yours.
And our days are probably more alike than you realize.
I still wake up and work.
I still disappear into the day.
I still get hungry around the same times.
I still eventually come home.
Sometimes I see the guys.
Sometimes I play golf.
Sometimes I sit around watching sports and yelling at a television like an idiot.
Sometimes work keeps me out past dinner.
My matka works nights a lot, so there are days where our schedules barely cross.
And no, I don't tell you every tiny detail.
Partly because this isn't private.
But you've shared so many little pieces of your days with me that I thought maybe I should give you a small window into mine too.
My mother reads these just like yours does.
So...
Hi, Mom.
Please don't turn this into a lecture.
I love you.
Anyway...
Baby.
My days haven't become some mysterious other life.
They're frighteningly similar to the days you already knew.
There's just one enormous difference.
You aren't physically inside them yet.
And I want you there again.
Not every second.
Not because either one of us should stop having our own lives.
I want you to have yours.
Your interests.
Your family.
Your ridiculous little things that have absolutely nothing to do with me.
I want you to be completely, beautifully yourself.
I just want to be the person you come home and tell about it.
And I want to be that place for you.
Home.
Peace.
Safety.
Truth.
Baby, I've been telling you how much peace matters to me.
And lately, you've been giving me more of it.
I'm proud of you for that.
More than you probably understand.
Because when I tell you I want my wife to bring me peace, I don't mean silence.
I don't mean obedience.
I don't mean never disagreeing with me.
God knows you're going to disagree with me.
I mean I want the world to be loud and us to be safe.
I want to walk through the door after carrying everything I carry and know that whatever exists outside can stay outside for a minute.
I want your arms.
Your voice.
Your stupid jokes.
Your stubbornness.
Your softness.
The real you.
And I want to be that same peace for you.
I want you to know that you don't have to be strong every second around me.
You don't have to arrive perfectly composed.
You don't have to have every answer.
You don't have to protect me from every difficult thing inside you.
Let me see you.
The soft parts.
The stubborn parts.
The frightened parts.
The angry parts.
The ridiculous parts.
The parts you don't give everyone.
Especially those.
And that brings me to something I want you to think about.
Not tonight.
You don't have to answer me tomorrow.
You don't even have to know yet.
But before you and I finally find each other again, I want you to ask yourself something.
What do you need from me?
Really.
Not what do you think I want you to need.
Not what sounds romantic.
Not a house.
Not a ring.
Not gifts.
Not vacations.
Not anything I can swipe a card for.
What does your heart need from the man who intends to love you?
Do you need me softer sometimes?
Do you need reassurance?
Do you need patience?
Do you need me to listen before I try to fix something?
Do you need space sometimes without wondering whether I'll disappear?
Do you need me to hold you without asking you to explain why you're hurting?
Do you need more laughter?
More affection?
More quiet?
More adventure?
More ordinary?
Tell me someday.
Because I know so much about what I want to give you.
But loving you isn't supposed to mean building the life I imagine and placing you inside it.
I want to know the life you imagine too.
I need your fingerprints on this.
On all of it.
I want to know what makes you feel loved when nobody is watching.
What makes you feel safe.
What makes you feel chosen.
What makes you feel understood.
What makes you feel free.
Because I don't only want to love you in the way I know how to love.
I want to learn how you need to be loved.
Again.
And again.
For as many years as God gives me with you.
Maybe that's the strangest thing about loving someone.
You begin thinking love means having someone.
And eventually you realize it means surrendering the illusion that you ever had control at all.
Because there you are.
One woman.
One little birdie.
And somehow you have the one thing in this world I cannot build, buy, negotiate, reason with, or replace.
My heart.
Completely defenseless in your hands.
And somehow...
I am not afraid of that anymore.
Keep it.
Just be gentle with it.
I'll be gentle with yours too.
There may be days between these letters sometimes, baby.
Don't mistake those spaces for absence.
Sometimes I'm thinking.
Sometimes I'm working.
Sometimes I'm simply living the life that I'm trying so hard to make big enough for both of us.
But you are there.
Constantly.
In the quiet spaces.
In the plans.
In the things I see and instinctively want to tell you.
In the empty passenger seat.
In the future house that still needs your fingerprints.
In mornings that haven't happened yet.
In a thousand ordinary moments I haven't gotten to live with you yet.
I don't forget you.
I don't know how.
The space has your shape.
And maybe that's the most powerless thing about loving you.
I don't have to remind myself to choose you anymore.
Somewhere along the way, choosing you stopped being a decision.
It became instinct.
Rest that beautiful mind tonight, baby.
I'll come back Tuesday or Wednesday.
I still have more to tell you.
I love you.
More than yesterday.
Less than tomorrow.
You, baby.
Still you.
Always you.