For The One Who Loves Me As I Am

For the past two years, I thought I needed a guy who would smoke cigarettes with me while we drank our morning coffee, someone who wore all black and wrote poetry, and was into dark French literature like me.

I think I realized that your heart doesn’t really know what it truly wants until it shows up, totally random and uncalled for.

I am now in love with a man who prefers to drink green tea lattes, who thinks he can play guitar, and has a strange obsession with Cupcake Wars. Someone who watches Woody Allen with me even though he doesn’t like it and comes over with Golden Kitchen veggie dumplings at midnight without me having to ask.

I think we all tend to make up lists in our heads of what we want in a partner and we believe we won’t be satisfied unless we find someone who possess all the qualities on our ridiculous (and often lengthy) lists.

But my love, you didn’t have one quality on my list.

I realized that dark and complicated is not fun and romantic. Going through life giving a little bit of yourself to men who won’t text you back the next day gets exhausting. It leaves you feeling empty. Having sex in bar bathrooms is disgusting and the smell of cigarettes when you wake up in the morning will make your stomach turn.

I hope I get the blessing of spending the rest of my life by your side, not because I couldn’t survive on my own… because I could.

But because you make my life more fun, and I like that you wash the dishes and make me wake up early to go on Saturday morning hikes.

And most importantly because you taught me how unconditional love really works.

Thank you.