Why I love you...

You ask why it’s you.

I see the way you watch people talk,
how your eyes track what they mean
instead of what they say.
You listen like someone trying to find the right note in a song.

But it's not just that, that is not why it's you.

It isn’t because you’re kind or careful or because you make me feel seen.
It’s because I see you. The whole of you.

I see the fire under your ribs, the way you keep trying to be good even when the world wears you down.
I see you losing things, forgetting, cursing yourself for it.
I see the cigarettes, the half-drunk coffee, the nights you go too far because you can’t bear the noise inside your own head.
You try to hide that part from me, as if I’d turn away.
But I already know. And I’m still here.

You’ve never scared me.
You’ve hurt me a few times. Once when you screamed, when I was already unraveling and you told me how dare I fall apart now.
You didn’t regret it then; regret came later, slow and clumsy but real.
That moment didn’t break anything.
It just showed me where your pain leaks out.
I didn’t stay because I’m naïve; I stayed because I believe in the you that comes after, the one who faces what he’s done and tries to understand.

I’m not afraid of fights.
I’m afraid of running away from them.
I can walk through any storm with you, as long as you walk too.
No argument, no relapse, no mess can end what’s true between us, only the refusal to face it together could.

I love your contradictions.
I love how you argue with yourself, how you care so hard it nearly splits you open.
I love your impatience, your clumsiness, the rough humour that breaks through when you least expect it.
I love that you think in spirals, that you dig until you hit something real, even if it hurts.
I love that the world feels truer when you’re near, even when it’s on fire.

You've never needed to be gentle for me to love you.
You've only ever needed to be honest.
Don’t protect me from your storms. Protect me from your absence.

I don’t want to fix you.
But I do want to witness you. The way you fight, the way you heal, the way you create.
I want to hear what your hands sound like when they play, to read what you write when you stop trying to be perfect.
I want to sit beside you in the quiet, both of us breathing, enough.

I'm still rooted in what's true.
I know this connection... is real.

You’re not perfect.
You’re not safe.
You are real.

And that’s why I love you.