I’ve always loved you. Even before I knew there was a “you” to love. Because you’re everything that you are. You’ve seen so much that my broken self has never seemed a burden. And I’ve seen enough that your mess doesn’t seem so bad.

I don’t know why I love you beyond that. I can’t help it. It’s not like magnets. Magnets are fickle. It’s not like protons. They can be separated with a little convincing.. It’s like quarks. I can’t exist in isolation, and you’re one of the pieces that keeps me tied to this world. And that bond is so strong, that I have no way to question it.

I don’t think that you’re perfect. I know you’re not. I don’t think you’re perfect for me. I only know that you’re one of them. One of the people who makes me feel this way. I’ve only met a few. The ones I keep loving through everything. Through the pain. The joy. The plain. The wild. It doesn’t matter. Because it’s a constant.

I don’t think that constant can’t change. Just that it doesn’t. I don’t think that there’s some cosmic bond between us. Only that a bond is there, and it is strong.

I don’t want you to be the only. I just want you to be the one.

Maybe one day, the one I marry. Not likely. It’s not outside the scope of possibility though.

Maybe one day, the one who calls me yours. But that’s not something I even dare to dream.

We are together. And for now, that’s enough.

Because it’s all I’ve wanted for the last 6 years. It’s the only constant. I want to be with you. Together. Whatever that means.

---

An Author's Note, Two Years Past

What a fool I was. Not to have loved so intensely what I could never have, but to have believed so deeply that after six years the object of that love would come around and change who they had been.

What a fool for believing that the hurt they had caused at four years was a one-off incident, and that there was nothing more they would do to me. And yet in the year that followed, they did far worse.

What a fool I was that I trusted and believed that they had truly changed and felt like they had changed their ways. But it was not so.

And so here in this place, I have removed their name, their identity, and their very essence. I will allow them no more access to my heart. All that remains in this place is a memory of how they felt, when things were finally starting to go my way. The beginning of the end.

I hope you've enjoyed this.

Poetic flare aside, this was once called "I've always loved you", but that was a time when I had not taken to giving it a proper name. It is now officially called "I Used to, Anyway." and will stand as a disappointment more than anything else. Because I had loved them. And they knew it. But that was never enough for them.