Love is sacrifice, compromise, tolerance and a whole bunch of other scary words.

Love changes perceptions of beauty.
Love is fond of love handles and stretch marks.
Love strokes your fuzzy hair

It knows that wrinkles and crow feet testaments to a life lived together.
Love teaches you to find the ordinary, extraordinary.

Love is forgiving.
It grants forgiveness before you ask, but oftentimes makes you say sorry anyways, because it’s good for you to be humble.
Love knows it will hurt you too.

Love is forgetful.
It forgets old words and old wounds.
And even when it remembers, it also remembers to stay kind.
Love has the worst fight of your life with you and then, right after, shares a coffee.
It will leave the last rollo for you.

Love it will be a spark,
a raging fire, of flutters in your gut one day.
Years later, it will be a steady burning ember, a sense of stability as solid as a rock and all flutters will always be there.

Love flips your idea of humanity upside down.
You think you know people and then you see what they will do for love’s sake, how far they will stretch the limits of themselves to care for the one they love and it makes you swallow, hard.

Love understands your weaknesses. It doesn’t mock that you are scared or you get cranky if you’re hungry.
It knows you have to drink your coffee really, really milky.

It will be quiet when you don’t feel like talking.
It will laugh uproariously at your lame jokes during a party to save you from embarrassment.
Love is loyal.

Love is a paradox.
It is awkward and graceful.
It is restful.
It is wild.
It is hurtful and healing.
It is gentle and tough.
It is confusion and clarity.
It strengthens you and makes you vulnerable.
It ties you down and helps you fly.
It is as rare as a pearl and as common as breath.

Love doesn’t always make you happy.
But it makes you better. Happy too, but also unhappy.
Because love knows that its central function in your life is to help you grow.
Growth hurts.
Every day, love changes you to become a version of yourself you didn’t know existed. Expanded. Stretched somehow.

Love is not a substitute for reality nor does it ask you to live in a more fantastic version of it because love lives real life.
And in real life, love knows, there are good days and bad days.

Love is beautiful.
Ross is love, forever my love.