I knew I loved you the day I learned your name. I knew I loved you the first time you said mine. I knew I loved you on your birthday, and I knew I loved you when you turned the light on.
photo by iStockPhoto.com
I was heartbroken and absolutely shattered by someone before you. He was someone I wasn’t formally dating, yet he tore my heart to pieces. Finally the day came where I deleted his number, threw my phone across the room, put down my head and wept. I thought I could never love again. I was certain it was the end of the road for me.
Days, weeks, months passed and it was the finally the beginning of a new year. Winter was still all around and everything was gray, bland, and dull. The days felt the same and the pattern was clear: wake up, brush your teeth, go to work, come home, go to sleep. Restart. The safety of monotony lulled me into a numbness that staved off complete mental breakdown.
But on one night in February, your birthday, everything changed.
It felt like a normal evening, people to see and places to be. The snow on the ground had melted and was turning back into ice. The streetlights lit up the slick spots into little fluorescent puddles; miniature frozen lakes sparkling beneath me hidden in plain sight. The black ice kept me in the middle of danger and pleasure, crunching underneath my feet as I walked up to the arcade. And just like the snow melting and freezing in its lifecycle on the sidewalk, all things remain fluid and ever-changing… it just depends on the weather.
Between pinballs pinging from side to side, Mrs. Pac-Man shifting around her enclosure, and plastic motorcycles revving in place, there you were, a stranger walking up to me. And in that instant, a light turned on.
From a place I thought was impossible to escape, inside a darkness that crept into my heart and made a home, I had buried myself in the scariest places I could go. But I found hope; a small flame burning with all its might, a little bulb fighting for its life. Within the lowest places in my mind, the coldest places in the back of my soul, I saw a light.
From then on, I knew I loved you. I knew I loved you the day I learned your name. I knew I loved you the first time you said mine. I knew I loved you on your birthday, and I knew I loved you when you turned the light on.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com
