When I discovered you, I felt so many different feelings all at once. I felt anxious. I felt worry.

In relationships- in the beginning- we always do the same things, and vow that this time it will be different. It will be different because this time, we won’t ever stop doing the little things, paying attention to the small beautiful and intricate details that make up the bigger picture that can gets muddied with the mundane. We will keep buying flowers, promise to compliment, and all this topped by a one hundred percent guarantee that lines of communication will stay open, honest, and filled with goodness and positive- albeit constructive- criticism.

On my birthday, this is my gift to you:

Tomorrow I am turning twenty nine years old. I have always celebrated my birthday for the entire month of July, as much to my mother’s chagrin as it was to my pleasure. As soon as July 1^st would introduce itself as the beginning of the seventh month, I would start hinting to anyone who would listen that it was my birthday month and did they want to help me celebrate.

Watching you gives me the same rush I get when I am standing at the start line of a race. Waiting for that gun to sound, everything that I have been training for, all of the miles I’ve suffered through, the pain I have endured has all led me right to this place with such apprehension. The way I have prepared for a long run is the way I have prepared for you.

When we met, I was stoic. I was a block wall that had been man-made; piece by piece had been piled one atop the other until I could no longer see out and was miserably numb enough to not want anyone in. The person you saw was hollowed out, no longer searching for meaning but instead continuously running in place.

I have come to the sad and probably very obvious conclusion that it is never a good idea to join an online dating service claiming to find my “Mr. Right” just a few hours after I’ve researched all of the registered sexual offenders residing in the city in which I live. After committing to memory every face on that list so that I am some sort of vigilante for my daughters, I have begun to confuse some of them with the men that are reportedly single to mingle.