“A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.”

I never ever imagined I’d grow up and fall in love.

Just like the white picket 2.5 kids white dress dog story didn’t fit into my worldview, neither did falling in love. Rather, I couldn’t imagine someone would fall in love with me, or even fall in lust. I trusted no one, and kept myself closed off.

We met first when I was 15 I guess, wrote letters, visited when we could. Slowly, with time, something grew.

I felt it the first time we met really, me scatterbrained and sitting at the GO stop, waiting, my giant bag that always smelled inexplicably of salami behind me. He swung into a parking lot, opened the car door, and I knew. I just knew.

He who had been part of me forever, maybe before, was standing there saying hello. But not in a sudden shock to the system, mindfuck kind of way. In a quiet, “I know you” way.

My body, my mind, my heart recognized him, and was quietly comfortable with him in that first moment. Every inch of my body yearned to reach out for his-it was like it already knew how.

But of course, I was only 15 or 16 and he had a girlfriend. It was almost painful to watch, but I never imagined we’d be anything more than friends. We lived apart. I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind.

a while later, in Guelph, in this horrible dirty house he lived in with an old man who loved Abba and hacked his lungs out every 5 minutes, a klepto and a schizophrenic who stared at my tits, you could feel it rising. A tension, an urge, a line we wouldn’t cross. Again-time and roads and life got in the way. I felt I couldn’t, I should make that move, reach out and finally touch him, really touch him as I’d been wanting to do for so long. I ached for him in some ways, my body aware that he knew me already-that we were merely waiting for each other.

Finally, one March, something happened. Events conspired and brought us together-a week spent sleeping little, but finally acknowledging something we both knew was there. His skin was like butter, sweet and soft and I will remember forever the feel of my lips on his that first time. That first kiss…was everything, that and his lips upon my neck.

I had fallen deeply, and honestly in love with him.

It took him a little longer to realize this, but it’s ok. He’s male.

This year marks 10 years of marriage, 11 years of being together. 11 years with the same person. 11 years with someone I love more today than I did then.

I love him more because of who he’s helped me to be. He has stood fast against the face of my illness. He has held my daughters late nights as babies, as I slept away my terrors. He’s wiped my tears and helped me to the bathroom when weak. He makes me laugh, hard from the belly like Kenny vs Spenny, even when I don’t want to laugh.

He’s walked a path lately that was incredibly hard for him, but he did it. And I am so very proud of him. He spends his days with our daughters, showing them what a man should be, watching them grow up and become children, later, women.

He thinks of me when I’m not around. He tells me that, and I feel warm and full.

He makes me happy, even if I sometimes forget to tell him.

I feel lucky to have found the person I believe “fits” me, completes me. Even the thought of him not being there scares me more than anything else in this world. I see us growing old together, holding our grandchildren together and sitting on our porch, bitching about kids today.

I look forward to every second.

Baby, I love you.

Happy Valentines Day.