Desserts

A letter to you,
We ate at Fresh Catch, the place I was so excited for you to try, and we had planned on eating Baskin’ Robbins later on that night. You were super full and bloated for awhile after, and I had asked you if you were hungry a couple hours later. You flinched and told me you were still really full from our early dinner. I smiled and asked you if you had room for ice cream – which we both know you’d never say no to that. But you laughed and answered back with, “I always have room for ice cream – you know, I don’t get that. How can people get full off of regular food and not want to eat anything more, but still have room for dessert?” At the time, I kind of made up some bullshit explanation that desserts fill up the empty spaces between the chunks of food in your stomach and it seemed reasonable. We both carried on with our studies and it got me thinking about my life as it is right now – here, with you.

It made me realize that no matter how busy I get, or how stressful my day is – I’ll always have room for you. My days are jam packed with work or nursing school and most times I’ll feel like I can’t spend time with you, talk to you, or fit you into my schedule. The crazy thing about it though, is that I always end up making time for you because I want you to be a part of my days and a part of my hellish weeks. It’s like when we eat out together and you get full off of the regular food – you always have room for dessert no matter how full you’ve gotten. I’m the hungry consumer, nursing school/my job at the hospital/my social life/my family life are the big meals I consume everyday, and you’re the dessert. The part of the meal everyone looks forward to.

Even when we don’t talk, or when we don’t see one another – I’m constantly blending you into my days. Whenever I see the pediatricians on the floor, I imagine your future as a doctor. I have conversations with them and I ask them about their journey and how they got where they are and I try to relay this stuff to you and give you tips. I see cheesy cards and balloons from families going onto my unit and occasionally I’ll see a giraffe balloon or a not-so-funny card attached to flowers and I’ll smile thinking you’d melt at how cute the balloons were or that you’d bust out laughing at how punny the cards are. At clinicals I’ll see procedures and surgeries and I always wish you were there to watch with me. A cochlear implant scratches the surface for OR procedures, and I wish you’d gotten exposure to more. I’ll be driving in the car to school and one of our many songs’ll come on and I’ll turn the volume up to an obnoxious level, I’ll smile and I’ll sit there without singing along.

When we are together, that’s a totally different story. Our conversations seem endless, and not the kind of endless that makes you look at the clock to search for an end. It’s an endless that makes me forget about time, and it allows the both of us to just get lost in our weird and intelligent conversations. My favorite moments are the ones where you randomly just start talking about something and I’ll say nothing for a full 5 minutes – just staring at you, in complete awe at how amazing you look talking about things I’d never even think to ask you about. I’m not sure how you feel about it, but it’s those small moments where you’re excited to share something with me that makes me feel the most at peace. It’s rubbed it self onto me because for a while, whenever I learned something new and exciting I wanted to share it with you immediately. I’d write little notes in my phone, or I’d text myself so that I’d be reminded later and I’d bring it up whenever I’d remember.

I appreciate our level of communication; I really feel like there’s nothing I can’t tell you. When something bothers me, I’ll bring it up and we’ll have real conversations about it. The same goes with you when you bring up something to me – I don’t feel the need to become hostile or fight with you. There’s something about you that calms me and helps me see things for what they really are. I’ve never really had that before. You’ve heard it all before – but I want you to know that I truly am happy with you. My family sees it, my friends see it, complete strangers see it.

Our growth so far has reaped so many benefits for the both of us and I can’t wait to see what the future has in store for us. There’s been a lot of times where I’ve gotten really close to saying ‘the L word’ with you. I write paragraphs and poems about the way that I feel when I’m with you and the words can never seem to fully grasp what I’m trying to get at. These words bear so much meaning but they don’t really do me any justice. In searching for the words that can adequately explain how I feel about you – I’ve finally been able to find a phrase that does me justice.

I love you, and I love you so much Josh.