Guess what! We're going to switch things up this year. This time we're not going to start with any jokes. We're going straight to the big feels. Because I just want to write about loving you.

I love that memory of you wondering out loud why other people have a curve around their stomach and I didn't, and the safety I felt in saying, "it's because I'm fat humph!". It's the kind of vulnerability I've always wished for in my relationships, and it makes me so happy to finally have it with you.

I also remember when we were in Toronto. I cried about feeling weak, about not being able to get through my list of to-dos. I was procrastinating work, procrastinating sleep, and procrastinating even showering. I thought that I was a competent person, but how could a competent person not be able to do such simple things? But I told you that the thought that scared me the most is that you wouldn't love me anymore if I was no better than your exes. In turn you reminded me of who I was and how much I brought into your life. Whenever I think about this memory, I feel grateful that I could so openly express my fears and feel your love reflected back at me.

Then there was the time when we both felt the same guilt about not putting more effort into our work nearly at the same time as each other. And we had to recognized that it was because we had put our efforts into our relationship and ourselves instead. We've said this before, but experiences like that really shows that we're moving through life side-by-side. Sometimes one of us experiences a difficulty sooner than the other, but the other usually follows soon after. I love that part of our relationship deeply, and I'm not sure I've ever fully expressed how important it is to me. For somebody like me, that has spent so much of his life feeling different, feeling wrong, being similar to you gives me a sense of connection, a sense of belonging. It makes me feel like I belong here.

These days, for some reason I imagine pretty often the scenario of somebody asking me why I love you. In those daydreams I never respond with just one reason like your optimism or your curiosity or your interest in people. It's not even the things I've written in this letter: the vulnerability I feel with you, the gratitude I feel for your love, or our ability to take life on side-by-side. Because we're people, and people are always changing. Instead, I always think about how everytime I sit down to take a good look at you, the person that you are, I just keep finding new reasons to love you.