To Her

I need you to know that I see you…

Not the version of you that holds everything together, so no one worries.

Not the version that laughs first, so no one notices the ache underneath.

You. The entirety of your soul…

The one who reads these words in the quiet and wonders if anyone has ever truly wanted to know her.

I want to know her… I long, to know her..

But I need you to know something first, and I need you to sit with it instead of running from it.

I am not perfect. I never will be.

I arrived here still carrying things I haven’t fully put down yet, still learning which parts of me are love and which parts are just old wounds pretending to be personality.

My ego still surfaces sometimes like a thing I thought I buried. I am still in the work of it. Still becoming.

And I am sorry for that.

I am sorry that I cannot offer you someone finished.

I am sorry that loving me will sometimes mean loving a man mid-sentence, mid-lesson, mid-correction.

That is not the fairy tale you may have wanted.

I know that…. I know it very well…

But here is what I can offer you, and I mean this with every quiet part of me that has survived everything it wasn’t supposed to.

I will show up. Every damn time…

Even afraid.

Especially afraid.

Fear has never been a good enough reason for me to abandon something worth protecting, and you are worth protecting, you are worth loving and fighting for.

Your softness, your history, the way you love people who don’t always deserve it… all of it.

I will not look at those parts of you and decide they are too much.

I just can’t bring myself to do something like that.

I will look at every inch of you and understand that the world did not teach you how to be loved properly, either. And I want to apologize if I ever show up in a way that makes you feel that I lack the understanding of your depth.

But I will try. Every day, I will try.

I want to learn how to love you in the specific language of all that you are and in what you will become.

Not how I’ve loved before, not what I’ve been taught love looks like. YOU.

What you need.

What makes you feel safe enough to stop performing…

I want to be the place where you exhale.

I am not asking you to fix me or save me or be patient with the damage that I’ve made no effort to address…. I am not asking you to wait on someone who isn’t moving in the right direction…

That is not this.

I am asking you to walk alongside someone…

…who is actively choosing growth, actively dismantling the ego, actively becoming someone worthy of what you’re brave enough to offer. YOU.

And I know I sound like a fucking broken record when I say this, but I’ll say it again and again because I need to know this and remember it as well… but….

…you deserve a love that does not make you feel like a burden for needing things.

You deserve someone who asks how you are and means it, who remembers what you said three weeks ago because you matter enough to be remembered.

You deserve to be chosen quietly, intentionally, softly, consistently, on ordinary days when there is nothing romantic about it.

I want to be that for you.

I am willing to become more than what I even knew possible, for the sake of myself and for the sake of being in a position to fully appreciate YOU.

I am willing to grow into that for YOU, US, and a FUTURE.

And if you’ll let me, I will spend however long we have making sure you never have to wonder again.

Imperfect, open, and always willing….

I am here.

— SIN