love isn't a big enough word

You were next to me and we'd just woken up and I wanted to document the things I felt laying next to you in the morning. You are so grumpy but I don't mind because I'm the opposite and no matter how much my lungs hurts and my body aches and no matter how little good 7 hours of sleep has done me, my motor still works and my mind is still vibrant. I got us cinnamon rolls and orange juice and brought you a tray in bed and you were too groggy to thank me so you just giggled. I think we both thought it was funny because you function miserably until you get out of the bed.  (That's you're butt in the background)
I've been looking forward a lot lately, forward to seeing you, forward to your breaks, forward to getting my GED, forward to Sasquatch!, forward to life changing drug.

I want to be able to type out how the un-insidious things turned out to be soon, I want to be able to say I trust you again after feeling a lot of bad things, we've just got a lot that was handed to us for some reason. If anyone can do it, it's us.

Sometimes at the end of the night I am just scared from movies like Blue Valentine, I worry about falling out of love when I never worried about falling in love in the first place. I just want us to be ok, and I want to be able to someday celebrate the amount of time I've gone without a big "X" in my journal to describe the way I feel when you're not around.  (I say this because of the time we talked about how Teddy Roosevelt loved his wife, and how when she died on February 14, 1884, his only journal entry was a large "X" and then the words "The light has gone out of my life".) (I imagine that is how I will feel when we have to quit being what we are to each other)

The light is still in my life

The perfect Oregon Sunday occurred on a Monday

We wanted to redo the anniversary that we messed up 3 months ago. 

From the ashes rose a phoenix, a beautiful budding happy naked giggly giddy silly phoenix. I love you so much, I just need to work on relaxing. You took these photos of me and for most of it I was just wondering what you were thinking, I feel my body looks much better in person and I don't find it super pleasant to look at nude photos of myself.  I loved being the only ones in the beach side hotel, I loved having a fireplace and a king sized bed and the sound of the waves far off, I loved having you to myself. I loved showering with you and I loved waking up next to your grumpiness, I loved watching movies with you and I loved how much fun we can have. Things are hard, but I need to remember all those things I love. I am still falling in love with you, and that amazes me. I think about it every single god damned day how I am still managing to fall in love with you more and more.

Why worry about the stars when the full moon loves you?

glowing

Here's to hoping that our redo anniversary will be special. I just want it to be special, you are so special, you are so so special, but I want to feel special too. I wanted to feel like you'd go out of your way and take some time and think of something that you know would make up for the way the last one went. But making up for something you've done wrong is not your style, there are no real "I'll pay you backs" because you never really go through with it. I love you so so much, I'm just trying to figure out why things feel like this so often, where it's you doing something wrong and making a promise or saying something and never really doing it-- like it was the promise that counted. I just want you to put in a little more effort, just make me feel special for a day, take me somewhere, don't demand I choose, treat me like a man treats a woman he loves, take care of dinner, take care of me. I don't know, I feel like just wanting you to treat me special is something that is a root problem in our relationship  So which of us isn't doing our job? I just want one day

I love you

Things have been rough since you've been at school for a whole lot of reasons. You're not a romantic-- you'd never though about us long term and when you first did it scared you. There are many things to be afraid of but you and I are both confident that we will keep making each other happy through every bout of anger and jealousy and sickness and death and hunger and thirst and it's gotten us this far already. I am so in love with you and we have been through things that 90% of best friends will never have to go through. My friends have dropped dead in three's since we met and I think that scares you quite a bit-- but I can't be sure because you would never burden me with those feelings. Sometimes I wish you would let me take some, they are so much easier for me to handle, but somehow you keep them in your pockets at al times like little weights that you think will make you stronger.
All of the odds are absolutely against us but I love you, I love you so much, I love you like crazy. Not a single human should have to swallow the things we've encountered. You're with a girl who's locked away her best qualities for an indefinite period of time because she's on steroids and because they've extended her life.  This is a scary compromise, among many other scary compromises we're trying to make. 

Somehow though-- against all these little battles we are still coming out on top. Today you said your mission statement was to make me fall in love with you again, I told you I was already in love with you and you said "But if I do it again, then we're sure to stay happy!" I feel like I'm going to explode when I'm around you, and it's good, it's so good, but sometimes we're too crazy, I'm too crazy. Sometimes I can't handle what I'm doing to you, it's hard to let someone love a time bomb. This is the bad kind of explosive, how sometimes I imagine you hugging me and I explode and I'm gone and my time was up and you're left alone. I carry a lot of guilt for that, but the point is, even with the negative, I am still falling deeper in love with you all the time. And I'm constantly thinking of how there is no possible way to love someone more! But you can! I can prove it to you a week from now when your dimples make me .10 times happier than they do now, I will prove it to you when a month from now your hugs make things feel even warmer than they do now.

We took these photos the other day and I want to remember forever that this was a time where we argued often, but never yelled. This is a time where we can be so frustrated at the circumstances and the  situations we've ended up in, but we still manage to love each other even as we're scared and angry and hurt. You have never let me walk away from you, and we are always patient with each other. 

I love you

I s'pose I've got a bad cold. I thought it was going to be pretty mild, but last night I was up until 9:30 in the morning coughing and out of it and delirious and confused and I haven't had much energy lately at all. I tried to take a shower but was too tired and it turned into a bath. I'm hoping I'll get better, nobody needs the extra stress this time of year.

crunched for time, we set up a photo-booth in his dorm floor's washing room