A Letter To My Wife...

!()

I am sorry that I wasn't able to find you sooner...
...if I'm even able to find you at all.

I've looked, probably even in places and people that I shouldn't have.

I looked in places that I thought 'might' be a good place to start, and it lead me down the wrong path, though one could argue that the wrong path was a lesson so that when I did meet you, I might be able to appreciate you properly.

Maybe I've already met you and just didn't know it. Maybe we met and through some twist of fate we hated each other, at first. Maybe we've crossed paths and I just wasn't ready to be a good husband, maybe I've already met you and you weren't ready. Maybe we know each other and one of us didn't recognize the other as one that we should be with. I just don't know, but I hope I find you soon.

I also have to apologize, in advance. The first time you meet me, it will be at the point when I'm not my best. In fact even after we meet, I'm not at my best. Though every day after will be, because it's one more day I got to have with you, and each day will be a better version of myself, of you, and of us.

I don't think it's fair that I had to wait so long to find you, and believe me; it's been far too long. But I know you're out there, somewhere.

I hope you understand...

...I won't be the turn-key boyfriend and husband. I have my own demons, I have my own sorrows, and I have my quirks, and ticks...but they make me, Me. I don't need you to fix me. I'm broken but I'm not without merits....what I do need from you is your kindness, and your understanding; so that when I do meet you, I can look back and say, "If that's what I had to go through to get here, then it was worth it." Don't worry, I know you have them too.

That's not me putting you on a pedestal, nobody can live up to an unrealistic expectation...that's me having faith that there's someone out there who's just as fabulously broken and our cracks and shards fit together so well that we compliment each other in such a way that the new whole is a glorious resurrection of who we were when we were young, and who we are yet to be, and that some day we can smile as we see that familiar wonder and innocence in our children's faces and have this unspoken realization that they are us, we made people....and it's our job to raise them together so they can be a representation of us when we're no longer here on this earth.

I hope you understand that in my flaws there's still value, and there's something there worth keeping around. I don't need you to be a whole person, I'm already a whole person. However, I do need you to be more than I am today; that's what I mean by you'll be meeting me at my worst...I won't be at my best until we're together and building a life together.

I won't be perfect...
I'll forget things that are important to you, I'll say the wrong things, I'll say things that upset you, I'll sometimes leave the seat up....I've been alone a long time, old habits die hard. That doesn't mean I don't care; that means that I need you to help me be the husband that I think you deserve. (And trust me, if we're getting married, my view of what I think you deserve will far exceed what you think you deserve, so there will be times I'll need you to reassure me, "It's okay, you still try to make me happy") Sometimes I'll get it right, sometimes I'll be way off, but know that I'll keep trying.

I know you won't be perfect either...
If we were all perfect, we'd all look the same, and act the same, and we might as well marry ourselves. I don't want to marry myself, I want to marry someone that compliments me. Someone that has talents and skills in areas that I lack. Someone that can put a different spin on things, so I can consider a problem from another angle that I hadn't considered before. Sure it'd be nice to see things the same way all the time, but we wouldn't be doing a service to each other, now would we?

I know there'll be times when you don't want to hear it. I know there'll be times when you just want to put your feet up. I know there'll be times when you are looking forward to new things together, and I know there'll be times when you want to go to your mother's.

You'll feel fat, you'll feel pretty, you'll see a line in your face where I don't. You'll be insecure, you'll be confident, you'll be scared, you'll be brave. Sometimes you'll want to go to a show, and other times you'll just want to be held.

I will appreciate the good times...
I've dealt with a lot in my life, some of it not so good. That makes me appreciate the good things. Sometimes you might think it's completely simply and won't think it's a big deal, and to me it might be everything. I also know there will be things happen that I won't think are a big deal, and to you they'll be the world.

I say this, because we both don't view the world in the same way, and that's what being with someone makes life so beautiful. Learning to see the world through someone else's eyes, if just for a minute.

There will be moments of happiness, and laughter, and touching moments. I will appreciate those, and I will appreciate the moments when you are happy, and laughing, and take a touching moment to heart.

I will appreciate the bad times...
Not in that moment, of course. Whether you're mad, or I'm mad, or we're both mad...or the world is just mad....we'll push each other's buttons, not because it's fun, not because we WANT to make each other mad, but it's that we care enough about each other to get mad.

There will be times when one of us are sad. Sometimes I'll say hi to the dog before I say hi to you. Someone won't remember an important date, or a favorite flavor, or that they promised to do something and forgot. We're not machines, we make mistakes. When nothing is done in hate or selfishness, it's nothing we can't overcome.

Bad times don't mean that I love you any less, it just means those times are just as important and that we care enough to have them, and they matter.

I want to be together...
...but it also doesn't mean every moment. You'll have times when you want to hang out with your friends, I'll want to hang out with mine, and there will be times when we want to be alone. That doesn't mean we don't want to be with each other. That's healthy and normal. And there'll be times when we can't get enough of each other.

I won't hold open every door...
Don't get me wrong, I hold open doors. I pull out chairs, I'll get your coat. I'll take out the trash. There'll be times I won't. There'll be times when it'll be awkward to reach across and grab a door, and there'll be times where it'll be awkward reach across and grab the door and I'll still do it anyway. The point is, I'll try, I won't always remember, I might be lost in a thought, I might be distracted, that doesn't mean you're not in my mind, but it also means I know you're capable, not that I'm being rude.

I'll be a good husband...and a good father...
I may not be the most handsome. I may not be the richest. I may not be the most famous. I can bring joy and happiness if you allow it. Most of all, I'll be grateful. Out of all the billions of people on the Earth, you chose me. Love is a choice. After all the sparks, and lustful drooling, that someone is important to you and means enough that when the butterflies leave, you want to stick around and tend to the caterpillars. I have always believed that it all starts with the tiniest of embers, and you have to give it fuel, and air, and carefully tend the budding flame, so that eventually it grows to the right size to keep you both warm. Sometimes the fires die and you're left with coals, but a coal can start the fire again. Image how pleased I was to learn that The Rebbe also held this belief, so if The Rebbe believed it, then I must not be far off when I came to this belief on my own.

There are so many ways to express love. Work, understanding, touch, deeds, words, trust, faith, hope....and what better way to build a testament to that, than to have a family together. A lasting impression on the world that we came together, and created these little humans, raised them to be good people, so they can go on in the way we taught them, and we live on through them, and in that way we never die and that love never dies.

I don't NEED you....

Meaning that I don't need you to be a complete person, but I DO need you in my life to be a better version of myself. I need someone else to give me a way of looking at things that I hadn't considered. I need you to see things in myself that I don't see. I need you to have some someone to talk to, because I get tired of talking to myself. Life is not meant to be spent alone, if this were true, there would not be two genders that are meant to come together to make new life together. I need that too. It's not because I don't want to be alone, it's that I can't be alone...not out of a need to not be alone, not out of desperation to not be alone....I can function being alone....I've done it all my life. But I don't want to just function. Just functioning is not functioning at all.

I want to LIVE!

I need you...

To be beautiful...that doesn't mean the airbrushed perfection in the way that only photoshop can lie, but beautiful in your own way. From a smile that's exploding to be expressed in a way that the smile itself doesn't give justice to why you're smiling. To a tan line. To the way you look in the oven to check the bread. To the way you look over your shoulder. To the way you give that look that only you can give. To be fabulous in a way that only you can be, and in a way that only I can really truly appreciate.

I don't know where to look...

You're the hide-and-seek CHAMPION!

(you win, you can come out now)

Or else I'd have found you already. Like that long lost favorite sock that the dryer must've eaten. I don't know where to find my match so we can be a pair of comfy socks. Are we even socks? Maybe we're boots? Maybe we're peanut butter and jelly, maybe we're peas and carrots, maybe we're Fish Fingers and Custard...that for some reason, in the moment, seem to go well together, and nobody knows why, not even us.....we just do. I haven't given up the search, but I am growing weary of the hunt.

Maybe you'll read this...
Maybe you're reading this right now. Maybe your friend is reading this right now, and they're are trying to get you to read it too. Hopefully you will read this so you'll understand I've been looking. Maybe you hadn't been born yet when I started looking and I just didn't know you were younger than I expected. This is not outside the realm of possibility. Maybe I'll never find you, and that, my dear, will be a tragedy. I've been looking for you my whole life. A lifetime to build these words, and several days to pry them out of my head and commit them to a readable format; and I'm not doing their motivation justice.

I just have to close with:

I can't wait to meet you, and really SEE you...not with my eyes, but to SEE you. In that moment I will no longer be lost and blind.

I just have to keep praying in the meantime, I may not notice you because I'm too wrapped up in trying to find you.....Maybe you'll find me....I'm lost.