When I first met you, we were so young that it’s barely at the edge of my memory.  I was shy — I didn’t really get to know you until later.

The first time I told you I loved you, I wanted your attention — wanted to make you squirm.  Later I said I loved you because you were the most loyal friend I had, and it didn’t take very long apart from you for me to discover that I didn’t want to live my life without you in it.  When I said I loved you then, it meant that I was finally learning to be happy, and you were teaching me.

Now, I tell you I love you a hundred times a day: out loud, every time you call, every time we say goodnight — and in my head, every time I think of you and how lucky I am.  I can’t tell you what I love you means anymore; it doesn’t seem like enough.  These three words that I’ve directed towards you for at least ten years now have come to mean more than I can explain.

It means: When you’re bizarre and manic and not making any sense, I’m the one who can decipher your thoughts and finish your sentences. And when I’m exhausted and distraught and impossibly sad, there’s nothing that can cure me better than crying all over you.

It means: If we were a puzzle, I know we’d be the jagged funny-shaped pieces, with colors and patterns other people probably wouldn’t appreciate, but which fit together perfectly and are beautiful like that.

It means: I want to spend every simple, mundane moment with you, from buying toothpaste to singing along to the radio to burning toast to waking up with my head on your shoulder.  And I want to do this a hundred times over.

It means: I promise everything that I am and will ever be to you, forever, because everything I am is so inextricably tied up in you that it’s impossible for me to be otherwise. I wouldn’t have it any other way.