Don’t get me wrong, darlin’—I do love you—oh my goodness, absolutely. 

My heart is split open, oozing ruby seas, with bird song poems that all sing your name. I am entirely yours, and I want you all to myself. I have never been happier in such sublime togetherness, as our two hearts share.

But I’m not going to promise to love you, as I have clung so foolishly to that pressured Hallmark promise too many times in the past.

Love is a yummy feeling of addicting affection that ebbs and flows at its own will—let’s create something deeper than that, something more raw, more rooted in reality, something more daringly substantial.

Love has limits—what we share does not. What we share is limitless—bound not by time, by earth, by thought, by mind or physicality.

This is an epic adventure of soul. A journey that, with our deepest effort, could one day lead towards awakening.

So let us not try to pin it down and neatly compartmentalize it to fit inside our brains, as we normally would do.

Let’s allow this indescribable magic to blossom wildly, to consume us entirely, without peppering in exhausting expectations of what it “should” be. Let’s throw out all the rules, allowing the lush vines of this sacred beauty to surprise and shock our eyes, leading us to trembling new heights, as we stumble haphazardly into what brilliant future this could become.

I do not promise to love you.

I will give you something far better, far wilder, far juicier than that—

I will give you everything I’ve got.

I promise to challenge you—to call you out on your sh*t.

I promise to keep growing, transforming and living neon-vibrantly, so proudly, alongside you.

I promise to be achingly honest and gut-wrenchingly present—especially when it feels damn near impossible, far too vulnerable to do that.

I promise to never, ever sacrifice my soul—or my dreams—for you.

I promise to taste your struggle and know your pain, but never, ever fix you.

I promise to be there, caring deep as the sea, encouraging you boldly, understanding the tender, torn parts of you that no one else can.

I promise to do my best to admit when I get stubborn and f*ck up.

I promise to honor you, my sweet wild man, by honoring myself most of all.

I will give you…this…us—everything I’ve got.

Love is great and grand, and it reads like beautiful calligraphy script—but we don’t just want wistful romantic fluff, do we, darlin’? That’s too flimsy, too forced—the pages are far too thin and can’t satisfy us for more than a mere two seconds.

We want the hot spice of soul. The cayenne depth of tethered togetherness. The thick, raw pages of truth—the pages of which love often only lamely scratch the surface; the pages of which love is just the tiniest, sweet frosting tip of the most massive, mysterious iceberg.

Let’s rip open the shiny surface and feast our souls on the glorious nectar that hides beneath.

No masks. No bullsh*t. No pretending.

I’m going to be me. You’re going to be you.

We will be ourselves—together.

What magic can be created when we strip it all down, and make it that deliciously, darlingly simple?

No plump illusions of changing each other, no desperate delusions of using one another to replace empty, isolating feelings of fear and loneliness—only the mutual, unwavering desire to journey together. Whole. Just as we are, walking together, side by side, skin touching, two hearts beating wildly in time.

Let’s grow together and get stronger together and rise together, making the the world more beautiful—together.

But we don’t need to promise constant, undying love. We know that love is just one tiny fraction—one glittering gem—in a million facets of what magical masterpiece this could become.

Let’s go deeper than we’ve ever dared to go before…

I want to read all of your pages. I want to be utterly consumed by the fleshy plot of your most complicated prose. I want to bite into the ripe mango depths of your being, look boldly into your emerald eyes and pore over the embossed Times New Roman words of all your stories—especially the stories you like to hide.

I want you to see me—not just my pretty sequined pink book cover—but to know my fierce, frothy depths and to experience firsthand the f*cking phoenix soul contained in my fiery, thunderous pages.

I want us to write lush chapters, whole books, epic tales that are so wild and vivid, they have to be true.

I want to go on a thousand heart-splitting adventures, with you, faithfully by my side.

And I will not tiptoe with you. I will not be careful. I will not politely accommodate you. I’ve been so careful, so dreadfully vigilant, so heartbreakingly accommodating my whole life. I’m shedding my safe, comfort zone skin right now, as we speak.

A careful, cute, polite love affair is the last thing I want—I want you. I want truth. I want gut-wrenching beauty. Heart-splitting poetry. I want the pure dangerousness of transformation that makes my old, yellowed fear shake in its knees. I want the soft fire and hot lava intensity of your soul when you let who you truly are ooze out of your sleeves.

So I won’t just promise to love you—

I will give you so much more than that.

I will give you truth and challenge and the vulnerable molten hot core of my soul’s rawest poetry.

I will give you…this…us—absolutely everything I’ve got.

So, let’s dive in.