I wasn't ready to meet you when I did. I wasn't ready to dive right in, I wasn't quite ready to get and be serious, I wasn't as prepared as I wanted to be.
But like you've been teaching me from then on, sometimes the best things happen when you aren't ready, and when left up to your own self, you never would have been 'ready' anyways. Sometimes the most fateful of things happen when you just do it. When you be a verb.
I thank God every day for that yellow Fiat in Italy, for that tug on your heart, for the friendship and partnership that has had a chance to come to life since.
To put it in your terms, you feel like the cream to my sugar. Or am I the sugar to your cream, cause I'm definitely the sweeter one? Or is it sugar to your coffee? Maybe I'll leave the Southern sayings up to you.
I know I'll rise with you. How could one not when standing beside you? Your words lift me up when I'm on the brink of throwing it all in. Your understanding of me makes me laugh almost weekly - how do you know the inner workings of my brain so well already? The grace you continuously show me keeps me feeling capable and worthy, the honest truth you proclaim holds me accountable and driven, pushing me along further and further until the fire inside of me realizes it's not yet ready to rest or give up - there are things to set ablaze, things to do, things to be a verb for.
I wish I could turn your encouragement around on you. I wish I could take the words and the things you often choose to believe in others and reflect them back to you in the mirror each morning, so you would always know the brilliant mind that lives inside your skull, the soft and big heart that beats each second beneath the shell of your defenses - that ones that are just for show - and the creative spirit that runs through your veins, the one that feeds your entire being, that makes up the inner workings of who you are.
You’re a friend and a champion like no other, and I vow to always return the honesty, the collaboration, the support, and the cheers of the champion that make up the inner cells of our friendship.
Thank you & I love you.