But still, I like them.

The gifts. The things you do. The way you always put thought into them. How grateful they always make me feel. How happy.

You make me want to give you the same happiness. So I thought about how much you wanted me to share pictures and videos while I'm traveling, and also how much you love words of affirmation.

I used all my available brain cells to put those two thoughts together, and made this as a gift.

Which, by the way, halfway through making this I did think, “Wait, doesn't she just want you to keep in touch? Aren't you actually holding back things you could be sharing to make this gift?”.

And basically, I didn't have the brain cells left to field those questions. So maybe we'll talk about that when I see you. But for now, here's some videos from my trip!

People come here to swim in the rip tide pools! We saw people swimming! Not in the pool in this video but still, they're super dangerous. One guy swam against a wave and moved zero inches because the currents going against him were too strong. So we were like, “Mmmmmm, no thank you. We'll come back at a time with lower tides”. Also here's me running away from a wave.

Not ideal. Anyways we went back another day and the difference was huge. Just super calm waters with some waves coming in once in a while. We all hopped in for a little bit and swam around. Here's my friend hopping in the pool first. You can hear me giggling in the background. Probably ignore that.

This mountain is my absolute FAVORITE part of the trip. The idea was that we'd drive up this mountain and see the sunset. Seemed normal enough. But then as we drove the grass slowly turned into volcanic rock. Then the outside started getting covered in mist. There was so much mist that water would condense on the car as we drove, but it wasn't raining. When the mist left, we realized we had been driving inside of a cloud.

We got so HYPED. Holy crap. We played every song that had lyrics related to getting higher. And we drove higher. Everybody was singing. It was the best.

When we got to the top, wow. That could've been a religious experience. I mean I'm still not religious, but you know. Also, isn't that jeep so cute? The color is nice. Almost like the blue you like, except it's not as light.

But what I want to say about this memory isn't just how happy I was. It's that I kept thinking, over and over, “Wow, I wish Sarah was here. I wish she could also enjoy this happiness. I wish we could share this happiness”.

And that's not- that's not very common for me, I think. It's wild because that seems like a normal thought that anybody in a relationship should have. But I don't usually have that. I don't usually think about it. I used to be afraid that maybe I didn't know how to love somebody enough to actively wish they could share my happy moments. And I'd always felt both guilt about that, and fear about what it meant about me as a person.

But I'm glad that I met you. I see the amount of effort that you put into your relationships. The care that you treat people with. That you treat me with. The attention you put in to observe our boundaries. The courage you have to hold difficult conversations, like when we talked in that cabin about feeling emotionally distant, when it was so hard to do.

I'm grateful for who you are as a person, because it's because of who you are as a person that I'm able to love you so much.