244

We're 40 days out from leaving the country and I can finally come up for air. All the hoops with selling our home and getting our paperwork together are falling away. Thank you for keeping me centered and seeing the bigger picture. We are going east, to Europe. We are going to a new world in the old one. We are having a new adventure. This is a reboot chance that a lot of people never get. We can change so much. We can be liberated from so much. With a lot of our belongings shedded and sold and stored, we can try new tastes. We are out of a rut, together. Just us, a few suitcases, and the cats. Together. In love. On a journey. We've always been doing this. Now we have new sights ahead.  I love you.

243

And all of a sudden our lives get turned upside down. Last Friday, I got the offer. Senior Writer. And relocation to Europe with it. 

We were out there, invited to see a slice of the world we had been to for a four-hour layover 16 years ago when we were traveling through Western Europe and I was delusional from a fever and the solid grip of a cold. 

But now, I was being recruited. And we had a 100-hour rush on the other side of the world. You enjoyed museums, I hustled through two days of interviews on three hours of sleep total. And I was fabulous. We had a day and a little more to explore, but it was a place where we felt we could live. 

We’d pare down the essentials. We’d start over in a way. A new life, although you will keep your job, which is going to help our finances. I get a job writing at a major studio. 

Thank you for this. Thank you for being brave with me as we make this leap. Thank you for supporting me. Thank you for being my wife.

242

To my love, happy monthly anniversary. And by the time we get to 243, we will have big news. Potentially life changing. One that might put us in another part of the world. Thank you for being supportive on every day that has led to this moment. Thank you for going on this journey, being open to an adventure that could take us thousands of miles away. I don’t think I could have done this without you. I love you.

241

Happy monthly anniversary to my love. I love you and I thank you for being so supportive in this past month. It’s been a month of good tension and tests. Every step of the way, you’ve been there cheering on me or giving my work a sanity pass. Right now, we are waiting for news to see how much our lives will change and how we might be looking toward a new adventure, together. And for this, I'm so grateful for you and us. I love you.

240

And here we are. 20 years. I’m writing this and I can’t believe it’s true. 20 years. How is it you love me still? How am I so lucky? What did I do to find you, earn your trust, and have you remain in my life? In my heart I know the answers and it makes me more breathless and in awe.

I see my flaws every day, and I assume other people can see them as well. I assume that’s all they see. But you see them and embrace me as a whole. You see beyond to a place I want to get to one day. You’re there waiting for me, today, tomorrow, in the haze of the future. 

I love you for it. I love you that you are here and there. It’s what love is, a promise based on potential and trust. It’s the same today as it was 20 years ago as of they were both the same point in time, looping back on itself until today was pre-ordained because it took place 20 years ago already.

I love you. I love us. And I strive to be that person you see me as now and then, when the gulf of time was seemingly collapsed by two words said at a rose arch two decades back on a Saturday in the month of June.

I strive to be always worthy of you. It’s my constant gift to you, even when I have nothing else to offer. I love you.