X · IX · MMXV
A rainy commute. A wrong turn that wasn't wrong at all. And ten years later, still choosing each other every single morning.
You were running late. I was lost. Somewhere between a missed exit and a coffee shop neither of us meant to walk into, we ended up sharing a table because every other seat was taken. Forty-five minutes later, the rain had stopped and neither of us had noticed.
I wrote it four different ways before I hit send. You wrote back in four minutes. That was the first time I understood the difference between liking someone and being unable to stop thinking about them.
Your parents' porch swing, a playlist I'd spent way too long building, and a conversation that started at eight and ended somewhere past midnight. That was the night I stopped being careful with my heart.
I said I do, and I meant it the way you mean the truest thing you've ever said. Ten years later, it's still the best decision I ever made.
A rainy coffee shop and a shared table that changed everything.
The conversation that made it real.
On one knee, by the lake where we had our first real date.
We said I do in front of everyone who ever mattered to us.
A tiny kitchen and a lot of big dreams.
And just like that, the love in this house doubled twice.
Still the same two people from the coffee shop, just with a lot more to show for it.
Ten years. I've tried to write this a dozen different ways, and every version starts the same place — with how unfair it is that you got the better end of this deal, and I still can't believe you don't see it that way.
You have this way of making hard years look easy from the outside. The moves, the late nights with a newborn, the year money was tight and you never once made me feel like I'd let you down — you carried all of it like it was nothing, when I know now it was everything.
I don't think I say it enough, so I'm saying it here, in a place you can come back to whenever you need to hear it again: you are the reason our kids feel safe, the reason this house feels like home instead of just a place we live, and the reason I still get nervous before I kiss you goodbye in the morning.
Ten years in, and I'd still choose that coffee shop table all over again.
I love you more today than I did yesterday — and not nearly as much as I will tomorrow.
(In a real Written & Kept site, this is your actual photos — placeholders shown here.)