In the end, I'm glad it's you.

Stop and feel this moment. Doesn’t it seem fragile, like the whole world is holding its breath, trying not to blink? 

Doesn’t the brazenness of young love seem like a million years away? How many times have we known heartache since then? Our scars are like webs across our hearts, and we sit here, naked, asking: Do you see me? Do you know me? Am I enough?

Let’s not listen to the voices, OK? Half of them are telling us we’ve found each other and from here it’s happily ever after. And the other half is telling us love is a sham, forever is a lie. What the hell do we know about forever? We’re just two kids with the rest of our lives to lose. Do we even know how to be in a relationship that doesn’t have an expiration date? Of course not. Nobody does. We just start somewhere near the beginning and time ticks, ticks, ticks us along until we’re older, until we’re old, until we’re dead …

Will you be there when I die? Will you still love me then, even in those last moments? Will you still hold my hand and trace the veins that run under my frail, papery skin? Will we still laugh until our sides hurt and tears run down our cheeks? Will you still look at me like I’m made out of sunshine and magic? Or maybe we won’t need magic by then. Maybe we’ll have found the comforting rhythm of friendship and life-long partnership behind the smoke and mirrors. Think of the life we’ll have lived, and all the things we’ll have seen. Isn’t life a wonder, the way it never slows down?

Please understand me. I’m as sure about you today as I was the day I met you, and every day in between – like gravity and tequila and God Himself brought us together. (And what tequila hath joined, let no man separate.) When I met you it was like I could see color for the first time. It was your eyes – sharp like a pinprick, soft like a whisper, dark like a thunderstorm, deep like the sea. I looked in them and saw everything I needed to know: I was home.

But I’m scared. Is that OK, to admit that I’m scared? Not of you, not of us – just of life in general and the reality of being human. I’ve spent 27 years in this body, and before I was 27 I was 7 and I was 17. And those people I was then, they’re still here, inside this body. Their memories, their experiences, their states of mind, they’re all still here, slinking around inside these hollow bones. I can’t promise you what I’ll be like at 37 or 57 or 77 because how could I? And you shouldn’t promise me either, because we shouldn’t make promises we can’t keep.

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. If I was, we wouldn’t ask every old couple we ever meet: What’s the secret? What’s the secret? The people want to know, what’s the magical formula that will lead us to a long, happy marriage? Because we don’t want to face the truth: There is no secret.

There is only you and me – two selfish, stubborn, messy people with the best of intentions, just trying to grow up and grow old and build a life in a world full of selfish, stubborn, messy people.

They say you don’t pick your family, but that’s not entirely true, is it? Because I picked you and you picked me, and together we’ll start a new family. We get to pick the person with whom we’ll share a bank account and a bathroom sink, forever. For as long as we both shall live. We pick the person who will hold up a mirror for us every day and say: this is you, look at yourself.

And in the end, that’s why I’m glad it’s you.

It’s only been a year, but already I feel like you’re a part of me, like an extension of me. It’s uncanny how well we match. There aren’t enough words in the English language to describe it accurately. Even our quirks, those rough edges in our personalities that prick and grind harshly against others, seem to fit. We move around each other like water -- ebb and flow, ebb and flow. Even our friction is like a slightly-too-tight hug.

You still fascinate me. I’ve been tangled up in your complicated, maze-like mind since the first day I met you, and I’m certain I could spend the rest of my life crawling around inside your headspace, looking at life through your eyes. But it’s the day to day, the way you move through life with such openness and ease, that I love most. It’s the in-between moments, the moments no one else sees, except us.

In the whole wide world of people, you’re the only one who makes me feel brave enough and safe enough and loved unconditionally enough to stand before you at the altar and say: Do you see me? Do you know me? Am I enough?