Dear you,
one year ago today I took this picture of you. I didn’t know it then, but I would be taking many more pictures. That day, we spent eight hours together. Eight hours is an awful long time to spend with a newly acquainted person. But I remember feeling like I was in a time warp. I lost my usual acute sense of time, and I felt like I was in an alternate dimension where only you and me exist. You said you wanted us to sketch clouds, so I grudgingly digitally painted mine with my iPhone, while you sketched yours with a pencil. I saw you inscribe my name at the corner of your sketch book. I never had anyone inscribe my name on a drawing.

One year later. Every morning when I wake up I snuggle up to you. And without fail, you would try to find my hand in your semi-conscious state in order to hold it tightly. So much time has passed, and you still hold my hand as tightly, as though you are holding it for the first time.

We try to sleep early at 11pm every night. I tell you we have to get into bed by 9pm. You ask me why, and I say that we have a historical pattern of talking for at least two hours before we’re both willing to fall asleep. We have been falling asleep later than 11pm, because it seems like two hours are still not enough.

While walking to the supermarket yesterday you were lamenting that we use too much plastic in packaging. It developed into a full debate whether supermarkets are really necessary. I argued for a centralised warehouse that could leverage on data for load balancing and drop-shipping. You said people need to be able to get food on the routes they are already taking, that delivery may not be more sustainable. What if groceries could be drop-shipped as part of public transport routes, I asked. These conversations — would A.I. ever be more intelligent than human beings, what is the definition of intelligence, are human beings fundamentally good or evil, would campaigning private jet owners to be more mindful of their flying patterns have a bigger impact than hoping for a change from commercial airlines — are a regular occurrence with us. It is the willingness to engage on a wide spectrum of ideas and to expand or challenge our worldviews, no matter how outlandish they seem.

I often have these debates within myself, so I am grateful I can now have them with you.

I have learned to to be more conscious of my consumption patterns. I now look at every piece of plastic differently. I once asked you why you chose to be a vegetarian, whether was it due to sustainability or was it empathy? You told me it had nothing to do with emotions, and it was an intellectual, ethical choice, that animals have the right not to suffer. As an aspiring vegetarian, I have so much respect for that answer. You have never made me feel guilt for my food choices though, and precisely because of that I try harder.

And you. You also teach me to smell the flowers.

I spent the entire day today trying to write something that would do the expression of my feelings justice, but words fail me. I tried to write about your generous love for me, how you were never afraid to love me more, how patiently you waited for me to catch up with you, how you never felt like I was too much, too little, too weird, how you never wanted me to become anyone else except myself. I wanted to express how your presence — you by just being you — keeps me calm. My mind is always in overdrive, but when I am in your presence everything fades away. You make my existence feel lighter. I thought being alive equates to intensity, but being with you has taught me aliveness can exist in the mundane.

Because you love me so generously I wanted to love you with a love of equal ferocity, if not more. When we genuinely want to love a person we attempt to clear the obstacles in the way. Even if it means ripping off bandaids, exposing old wounds and letting them hurt, so they can heal. I have become more whole in the process of learning to love you.

I now know what they mean by a better half. Why do people get married. Why there are stories of spouses passing away not long after their other halves pass. How love can actually strengthen and get better with time.

I tell people I live as if I might die the next day. They either get amused or think I am morbid. But you, you took me seriously right from the get-go. So despite the odds you took the first steps towards me, towards us, because you too didn’t want to take the risk, that there may not be a next time.

Thank you for knowing me, for understanding what aliveness means to me. For being a willing participant and co-creator to our unfolding story. For being a mirror to parts of myself I could never have seen without you. For telling me that I’m gorgeous, a word that has never been used on me. For loving parts of me I am having a hard time loving myself. For thinking the world of my work. For wanting to bind your life to mine. For walking this path with me even though it is full of uncertainty.

Thank you for loving me.

p.s. I worry about ending this letter, that I would forget to include some other endearing parts of you. But I could always write more.