To my girlfriend on our anniversary

Today, we mark one, one like what we intended to be a date like this last year. The day we decided to let go of all the fears we had, the day we choose to cut off all branches on us and grow as one stem. One like the first step a baby makes.

Just like the baby’s first step, we would be lying if we said it was a perfect step. We let go of the support we had as we were getting off the floor with reservations, mainly due to the fear of the unknown. Just like a baby’s it was shaky and not stable and not once, not twice, not thrice we wanted to go back to the props we held to as we rose to stand.

But we held on and stood firm in love, after all wasn’t it much better than the crawls we had had before this? Was it not encouraging that we wouldn’t bruise our knees again, that we wouldn’t need to look up to others when they talked with us but would look straight at them? And how awesome was it with the support we got from family and friends, they cheered us all the time, clapped as we lifted our foot to make this step and applauded every time we took the foot forward.

Forward it was, forward we were determined to move and our eyes were set on no other direction other than forward. This despite the mockery, laughs and discouragement from some. Them who eagerly waited for us to topple over and hit out forehead on the table, them who couldn’t wait for our tender gums and lips to meet the ground.  They who always waited for an “I told you so” moment, they who would only be too glad to see us mourn in pain.

Pain has been an alien term to me. So alien that I can’t even find an opposite term for it because what you create in me is just more than joy, more than happiness, more than delight, this is more than even being elated. You have been there, I wouldn’t say through thick and thin and neither would I say through ups and downs because with you here it feels all so normal at all times.

Times have been awesome, times have been great and just like the Times Towers we have known abundance, not in monetary terms like it is with the towers but in goodness, joy and love.

Love, I would wish to define but all stands still when I think of you and can’t go past there. Just like the Best Man Quartet I would like to sing “Help me be the best man I can be” but I am left with no choice when with you but to say, thanks for making me the man I am today.

Today, like I have said all other days, for us it is never “the rest is history” because the rest for us lies in the future.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY BABE!