I Don't Deserve You

It was a while ago now, when I watched a bug lift off from your computer screen as you waved it goodbye. And when I asked you what just happened you said, "He was a good moth." You once picked up a snail, which was crawling right towards the open road, and put it in a flower pot. One night not too long ago you ran after a frog in the pouring rain, catching it with your hands, so it wouldn't get squished by cars. You placed it in the tall grass by a church. And then we had a locust named Franklin, whose status was upgraded from live food to pet after he proved himself in arena combat with our cats and reptiles. You hand-fed him only the freshest and finest vegetables and he lived like a warrior king until he passed away in a tragic shedding accident.

RIP Franklin, 2014-2014

Your world is this bright, happy, rainbow-coloured place, which is silly in all the right ways. We once joked about how your water bottle is tired, because you always keep one of them in the bedroom. You put it on your pillow, pulled the covers over it and kissed it goodnight, because once we've gone there, the joke had to be taken all the way to bizarre levels of stupid. Glorious! You spot and rescue invisible, slippery animals all the time, yet you couldn't open a carton of orange juice if your life depended on it. I think that's why I treasure your Pathfinder tabletop character so much. A tengu rogue, who goes from moments of utter toddler-style clumsiness to sheer brilliance and back, with nothing in between these extremes.

I'm happy to be part of your silly world, because the alternative is grey, dark and very depressing. I used to sit and think about how many of my colleagues I could take if I ever showed up in the office with a battle axe. I used to sit in a dark, tiny room in my shitty apartment, surrounded by moving boxes I had not unpacked for more than a half decade. My tv was always on, even though I rarely paid any attention to it. It was just nice to hear some background noise.
You may think I'm being overly dramatic, but I'd sit there, alone, in my dark room at the night of my birthday and my parents wouldn't even call until the next day, because they simply forgot. I'd sit there all by myself and watch the fireworks through the window on new year's eve. Life was shit.

Many couples have those cheesy, romantic stories about how they first met. But we were intoduced to each other after I tried to aggressively cyber-bone your mother. The first time we had met in person, the first time we ever touched, held hands, fell in love nine years ago, a pigeon took a giant shit on both of us. We watched a jeweller's descent into madness as she desperately tried to find an engagement ring that would fit on one of your tiny, delicate fingers. We suck at being romantic. Your spot in our favourite restaurant is right underneath a pig's asshole.

And now they shut the place down and we have nowhere to eat steak. :(

Looking at Facebook I can see how most of my friends and siblings are starting their own families. The two of us try for a baby like rabbits on one day, only to go, "In this economy? What the fuck were we thinking?" the next, fretting over the result of... look, I lost count, but we've probably increased sales of pregnancy tests a lot.

When we hooked up it wasn't anything like the movies. It wasn't like anything my friends told me. The one story I've been told the most is when one of my friends met 'the one' and it was really big and exciting, as though they were struck by lightning. Spectacular stuff. Their words, not mine. I heard that story a lot. I'm not sure if that's just how they choose to remember it or if people really experience it that way, but apparently there's this BANG, this feeling that something big, life-changing is about to happen. With you it wasn't like that at all. And I don't mean that in a bad way.

Suddenly you were just... there. We talked and there was no awkward 'getting to know you' stage, no 'hey, I've been thinking and I really like you and I was wondering if...' - you know, that sort of thing. It's hard to describe. One moment I didn't know you existed and a couple lines of text later you were part of my life. Simple as that. I flew up there, crashed on your family's sofa and you just went to sleep right on top of me. Which wasn't as kinky as it may sound. And from there, things simply stayed that way. No real transition or anything.

Like this, but uglier and less adorable.

"Whatever you do, don't fuck this up", a friend told me. "Don't question it. Never question a good thing", was another great piece of advice. Because frankly, I find it difficult to understand what you see in me. I'm spending most of my time writing hilariously underpaid articles, which get torn apart by 14 year old trolls in the comments section. We'd love to see the world but the only trip my work has bought us lately was straight to the hospital. I went back to work the same day they let me out.

Oh hey, speaking of shit I write - if you check your bank account statements from the last couple of months till now and read the reference section in every one of my weekly transactions to you from then till now, they tell the story about a pineapple who wants to go to space. Bet you never noticed!

Life is still shit sometimes. In a way, I'm still trapped in my dark room right now, trying to figure out how to finish all of my work before I run out of time (obviously not by writing a fucking blog, duh!), wondering how the fuck we're supposed to afford Christmas and whether you'll still have a job next year. I'm still going back to my shitty apartment when I go to sleep, every night, even six years after we've moved out of there. I have no idea why I keep going back there or why it's impossible to let go.
But it's really not so bad now. Because you're always there. I always dream of that shitty, depressing place, but you're there. And then we just leave, go on trips together, travel the world, go out shopping, do all the stuff we're hoping to do for real someday. You know, if one of us ever starts earning money.

We could probably afford cooler shit if we didn't have so many damn pets.

I love you. I always have done, from the moment we've first met. And I'm grateful for every day that we get to spend with each other. I work for a dying industry, we have no retirement plan or a rainy day fund, the most powerful nation in the world is about to be run by a complete madman and our country is leaving the EU, because the dumbest people in the land believe this will somehow stop immigration from Syria, because apparently all brown people are terrorists or something.

With all the shit that is happening everywhere around us, it's nice to be part of your world. It's nice to chase after random badgers and weasels and foxes, to retreat to our own happy little bubble every once in a while. The world is still fucked, but things are a little more bearable after watching you rescue a frog or bed a water bottle. Please don't ever change. Please always be your calm, gentle, loving self. Always dare to be stupid. And thank you so much for nine amazing, wonderful years. ♥