I fell in love with you at first sight. It was raining, and I was in high school (my God, was I ever really in high school?), and I saw you, and the world shifted from its axis. The rotations reversed. Everything became disjointed and more real in an instant. That was a long, long time ago. You didn't know.

Since then, our lives have taken very different paths. We have been many things to each other. Friends. Lovers. Comfort. Strangers. But always, always, I have loved you. I have said your name at least once a day, to myself, every day since we first met. I have held your face as a beacon of light in my mind when life became intolerably dark. I - a man of very little faith and even less trust - have always believed in you. I have always believed in us. Feelings of such magnitude demand faith by virtue of being larger than we believed our hearts to be.

Very recently, we seemed to flip a switch. We were on the same wavelength. We are older now, able to talk about things that lay - not quite dormant, but certainly not active - just below the surface. We have cast off fear and perhaps wisdom and self preservation and opened ourselves. It is complicated for so many reasons. It is challenging for so many reasons. It should be scary, but it isn't. Whether that lack of fear is a warning or a blessing, I do not know.

I don't care.

I have loved you for half my life. I will love you for the remainder. That's not going anywhere. And distance, time, obstacles be damned - I am putting a ring on your finger and will dedicate the rest of my life to making yours as beautiful as you deserve it to be.

I have spent more almost two decades wandering aimlessly, but now I feel I am back on my proper path. A path whose trailheads only mark distance to you. And the signs have changed - they no longer indicate miles, the tell me time. And they all read, "Soon."