Dear Seth,

I’ve decided I shouldn’t wait until my loved ones die to write them love letters. It’s your turn.

This year was supposed to be so much better, right? I remember the end of last year, swaying with the crowd, singing “Start Wearing Purple” like it would become the anthem of 2010, the very essence of our hopes and dreams. You were across the room from me but I didn’t feel lonely or left behind. You were checking in, we made eye contact, and I thought of how much I loved you, how lucky I was to have you, and how much ass we were going to kick this year. You’d fought your way to the front of the stage and the Gogol girls were pouring champagne into your mouth and I stood back, to the side, and I was happy there. It was fine. It was as it should be.

So this year, it’s not better so far. I am not sure if it’s worse. It has certainly been a test, or perhaps a series of tests – a gauntlet, I think sometimes, that I must run at full speed if I am to survive. The problem is that I’ve never been a very good runner, and though I try my very best, I am so slow, and so weak, and so scared, and so unsure of my ability to make it through to the end. Sometimes I think I will never catch up to you, much less keep up with you. Sometimes it is very hard to see to the end.

I am not easy to love on the best days, and these have certainly not been my best days. I know what it costs you sometimes to stick around, and you know I fear that I can never repay that debt. I worry that by the time I am better, by the time I am able to be the partner you need, that it will be too late. But through all of that, through the nights when I keep you up coughing and feverish, the days when I drag you down with my worries, there is this:

I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you in a way you have never been loved. It is a love that carries no conditions, that does not judge, that does not depend on good behavior or a positive attitude. It is a love that persists through the worst weather and the most infuriating challenges. It is a love that is patient and pure enough to watch from the back of the room while those Gogol girls feed you champagne. It can embrace that effervescence, can give you the time and space you need to enjoy it, can even share it at parties sometimes. Those girls won’t build a home with you. Those girls won’t take care of you when you’re feeling bad. Those girls won’t fold your underwear, won’t carry your babies to bed. Those girls won’t be around when money is tight, when you hate yourself and the world a little, when you’re angry with them, when you feel frustrated and powerless, when nothing seems to be going right.

This one will. This girl always, always will.