There is a specific kind of quiet that settles over you when you finally realize you are exactly where you are supposed to be. Lately, that quiet has a name. Whenever I look at Drew, I find myself wishing for the impossible: I wish I could freeze time.
If I could pause the world, I’d use those stolen hours to claim all the space we missed out on. For so many years, we were both spectators. We stood on the periphery, watching the people around us stumble into love, experience those effortless, textbook beginnings, and find their people. We sat back, perhaps in different places but with the same quiet longing, waiting patiently for our turn to come. We watched the world celebrate all those little, ordinary milestones, wondering when—or if—the universe would finally call our names.
I wish I could freeze time just to give us back those years. I want to live out all the moments we were denied while we were busy waiting. I wish I could give you the kind of relationship you truly deserved from the very start—one where we had the luxury of a slow, gentle sunrise. I wish we could have gotten to know each other at a normal pace, savoring a predictable, quiet courtship instead of being swept up in a fast-paced tide where everything had to happen all at once.
But please know this: I have never once regretted the speed of us. I don’t regret a single step, a single rush, or a single choice when it comes to you.
Before you, life felt like a heavy countdown in the humid air of North Carolina. I was carrying an invisible weight—a suffocating mix of sadness, darkness, and a persistent, quiet shame. It scares me now to admit how close I came to the edge, how many times I stood on the brink of just wanting to disappear from the world entirely, without anyone ever knowing how dark the room had gotten.
Finding you wasn’t just a happy coincidence or a new chapter. It was the radical redirection I needed to save my life.
But this isn’t a story about the darkness; it’s a story about the light.
I am eternally grateful to God, to the universe, and to whatever forces finally decided it was our turn, because you do something I didn’t think was possible: you see me. Truly, deeply see me.
You see every single contradiction of my character. You witness the dramatic highs, the low moods, the flamboyance, the loud, chaotic energy, and the downright ridiculous, messy behavior. You see the flaws I try to mask for the rest of the world, and you don’t even blink. You just stay. Through every peak, every valley, and all the beautiful, ordinary spaces in between, you are simply there.
I know I tell you how much I love you all the time. Sometimes I worry you’ll get annoyed by the repetition, but I can’t seem to stop. I know what it feels like to sit in the dark, wondering if your absence would even leave a ripple, and because of that, it means everything to me to ensure you always know exactly how much you matter. Hearing it changes you. Saying it tethers me to you.
If I could freeze time, I would. Not to rewrite our story, but to expand the borders of it. I’d freeze the clock so we could finally catch up on all the living, all the small hand-holds, and all the quiet waiting we did before we finally found our way home to each other.
Until then, I’ll just keep holding onto these moments, grateful for the man who saved my life just by loving me for exactly who I am.
Blank Space & Polaroids 
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