A year ago today, we were strangers.
I met you before I found out that my uncle had passed away. I still think about that sometimes—how you arrived before that day became one of the heavier days I would carry. I do not know if people truly come into our lives for a reason, but I have always believed that you came into mine when you were meant to.
We clicked so easily.
What started with two strangers getting to know each other became something neither of us had to force. We were comfortable, excited, and certain enough to try. Maybe we moved quickly, but at the time, it felt honest. It felt like we found something worth saying yes to.
And for a while, we did.
Then the real parts of love came.
The first few months of our relationship tested us in ways I do not think either of us expected. We had problems that could have broken us, but we faced them together. We stayed. We talked. We fought for what we had. And when we got through it, I was proud of us.
I thought surviving that would make everything feel easier.
But somewhere after that, I began asking myself questions I did not know how to say without hurting you.
I started wondering if I was enough as a partner. I wondered if my age and the life I am ready for were asking too much from someone who still deserves to enjoy his own life, discover more of himself, and make plans that are fully his.
I do not want you to feel like loving me means giving up parts of your life before you are ready.
And I do not want to keep convincing myself that love is enough when our plans are slowly beginning to point in different directions.
That does not erase what we have done right. It does not make our love less real. It only means that sometimes two people can care for each other deeply and still have to be honest about what they need from life.
I do not know exactly what our ending will look like. But if we ever reach it, I hope it comes with the same honesty that brought us together.
I hope we remember that we tried. That we faced what came for us. That we gave each other love in the ways we knew how.
You were there during one of the hardest days of my life. You stayed up late. You gave me comfort when I did not know how to carry what I was feeling. You listened when I had too much inside me, and you stayed even when I was not always easy to be around.
You became more than the person I fell in love with.
You became someone I trusted with the parts of me that were grieving, scared, tired, and still trying to be okay.
Whatever happens after this, I do not want to remember us only through the possibility of an ending.
I want to remember that you came when my life was carrying both loss and new beginnings. I want to remember that we chose each other, even if we did not always know how to do it perfectly. I want to remember that, for a time, we gave each other something real.
If our love story does not last, it will not be because it was not enough.
It will be because we are two people still becoming who we are meant to be—even if we cannot become those people beside each other.
Thank you for coming into my life. I will always be grateful that I had you.
Thank you for being the person who made a difficult year feel lighter.
And no matter where life takes us after this, I hope you never doubt that being loved by you changed me in ways I will always carry with tenderness.
And whatever happens, you are part of my family.
Always.