On the first day we texted, you told me you were two different people. Work you and personal you. You said it like a warning and an invitation at the same time. I heard both. I chose the invitation.
By the end of that first day you had told me you were scared. I asked you what you were scared of. You didn’t answer for an hour and a half. Then you came back with two sentences.
An entire lifetime of being hunted by men. Pattern recognition.
I have thought about those two sentences more times than I can count.
You told me on January, five weeks in, that you love the chase. That you need the will they won’t they tension. That you were not born with a chill gene. You said all of this with complete ownership and zero apology and I loved you for it and kept going anyway.
You told me you were fire and water. Hot and cold. Explosive.
I told you maybe we’d balance each other out.
You said many have tried. Untamable.
You were right. I should have listened more carefully to that word. Not because I should have left. But because I spent the next year trying to be the thing that steadied you instead of just being the person who ran alongside you.
On February you told me you were drowning in front of lifeguards but didn’t want to call for help because you’d bother someone.
I sat with that sentence for a long time.
I still do.
You told me you couldn’t remember the last time someone told you that you were beautiful before me. You said it had been jarring.
I want you to know that I meant it every single time. You are genuinely, specifically, particularly beautiful. Not in the way people say that. In the way that is true regardless of whether you hear it.
You deserved to hear it every day. For years before me. I’m sorry you didn’t.
I was not always the person I wanted to be in this. I got scared when you went quiet and I filled the silence when I should have held it. I reached when I should have waited. I let the missing you become louder than the knowing you, and that’s not fair to either of us.
But I want you to know something about October 7th.
When I said you make me pause, I meant it in the deepest possible way. Not that you frustrated me. Not that you confused me. You make the whole machine slow down. You are one of the only people in my life who has ever done that and I don’t think you know how rare that is.
You skipped your own vetting process with me out of a gut feeling. You said so yourself.
I hope that gut feeling was right. I believe it was.
You are getting ready to move to my city right now. I don’t know exactly when. I’m not counting the days, or I’m trying not to.
I sent you my last message on April 7th. I meant every word of it. I’m not going anywhere. Not when things get heavy, not when we go quiet. That hasn’t changed.
But I’m also not waiting in the way I was before. I’m building my life. I’m doing the work you told me about, that you’re doing too. The healing that is hard and ongoing.
When you get here, if you want coffee, I’ll be here.
No guarantees needed. No timeline. No expectations.
Just two people who recognized something in each other in a conference room and spent the next sixteen months trying to figure out what to do with that.
You once said it was a lot easier when you were making everyone happy and drowning silently.
I know.
But you stopped drowning silently. That took everything you had and you did it anyway.
I see that. I’ve always seen that.
Te amo mucho y siempre.
G