It was the day I told you that my heart belonged to another.

That I loved another more deeply than I ever had before.
That the only arms I craved to be held in were his.

It was the day I told you I could not promise you anything.
That I had nothing to offer to you.
That all I could give to you were the tiny, left-over pieces of my heart.
The pieces I could not present to the one my heart belonged to.
Could not present to him because he would never understand what those pieces truly meant.

They were the pieces that I knew would not fit.
Would not fit into his heart.
Not because there was no space for them,
But because they would shatter his dream of me.
His need for me to perfect his story.

And I knew that you,
You would accept them.
For you would accept those pieces of me even if I did not accept them myself.

For you accepted my sorrows.
You accepted my confessions of all the times I had found myself in a pile of tears on my floor.
You accepted my rage.
My rage towards the universe, in times when I felt it was being unjust.
You accepted my imperfections,
Which I myself could not accept.

You accepted my imperfections just as you accepted my perfections.
For to you, there was no bias.
No choosing of sides.
No desire for definitions.
Only wisdom, which led that heart of yours.

And so that was the day you told me,
You would love me even if my heart belonged to another.
The day you told me you would care for me, even if I ever, for any reason, stopped caring for you.
The day you told me you would love me, even if I ever stopped loving you.
Still, no words could ever steal this heart of mine, which had promised to never fall again to mere words.

So let me tell you how you truly stole my heart.

You allowed me to be me.
You allowed me to be me without your even knowing it.
You allowed me to be me,
Without the need for me to pretend to be anyone else.
To pretend to be happy when I was not.
To pretend to be perfect when I felt I was not.

You gave me the safety to share my imperfections with you.
And no, not over some words exchanged over a few weeks, a few months or even a few years.
But over an entire lifetime.
You let me be me.
And you accepted me before I even knew how to be me.

And so that was the day,
The day I closed my eyes and could see only one love before them.
The only love I longed to be embraced by when tears of sorrow poured down my face,
The only love I eagerly awaited to share my joy with,
And the only love I could imagine lying beside, without any words to share at all.
The only love who would, even in this silence, find inspiration radiating from within me.
The only love who would, even in my emptiness, find light.

And so that love I confess,
Is you.

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Apprentice Editor: Chrissy Tustison / Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photo: via Flickr