Gunna Let It Shine

I feel like I have known you my whole life, and the life before this one as well. I feel like every inch of you I've seen before, like every piece of you I've known before. This feels less like getting to know you and more like reminding myself all about you, remembering things I knew before. 

You saw something worthwhile and bright and good in me when I believed nothing in myself was anything better than dirt. You sat next to me while we circled around tables with other addicts learning to live clean, you listened while I shared my struggles and triumphs and I while you shared yours. You passed me your number through a friend and the next night we sat in a coffee shop and talked for hours, then sat in your van that became our van for hours more after a meeting that night and talked on. No silence felt uncomfortable, no topic felt taboo, no shred of our pasts felt like something needing to be hidden from each other. Complete honesty from the start was a firm foundation for the love that grew and spread in our souls like wildfire. 

I told you I wasn't good at this kind of thing, that I needed you to make the first move. The next day we kissed and then we fell fast and hard. Absolutely out of control in love. I knew within days you were the one. And you said you knew the same, and I could feel in my heart and soul you spoke the truth. 

I have not since childhood felt so safe as I do in your arms. I have not put my trust so completely in another as I have with you. I have never before come together with someone and wanted to pull our bodies so close together that we become one being, for you are the piece of me I never knew was missing but now could not imagine being without. When we lay wrapped around each other, drifting off to sleep, I'm often hit by a wave of love so intense it hurts deep in my heart, and ache pure and good. There is no place on earth I am more content than in your embrace, bodies pressed together, being still and silent and knowing nothing could ever destroy that moment of ours. 

You are my love, my life, my heart and my soul. You are the wind that lifted my broken wings back into flight. You nourish me and guide me and lead by example. You love me without limits and I do the same. You point out all the good things you love in me and never once have you brought up the bad. You've showed me all the reasons I should love me, you're the reason I looked myself in the eye in the mirror today and realized I love myself today, I love what I am today, who I have become with your gentle nurturing. 

I love you with everything I am, with every fiber of my being. I spent 26 years waiting for you, not knowing until I'd met you how alone I'd truly been all those years. It's only been four months I've known you and yet my heart has been waiting for you all my life. I am meant to be yours and yours alone. Thank you for being my Big Goofy, my soulmate, my one true love. Thank you for loving me as deeply and irrevocably as I love you. You've shown me the true gifts of life without smack- all the powerful emotions and you remind me why drugs are no longer an option for me. My euphoria is found in being one with you, in knowing all will be well in the end. 

Our life together stretches out before us, our futures having now become our future. I've waited so long for you, and now the waiting is over and our life has begun. There's a flame that burns in my heart for you and you alone, a flame that's burned away my regret and given me firm faith that everything happens for a reason. I burned myself down with smack for fifteen terrible years so I could walk into that first meeting back and keep walking right into your arms. 

This flame, I know is one that will never burn out. This flame I will keep lit all the days of my life. This flame is good flame, this flame is pure and bright and cleansing. 

I love you Joel. Always and forever.