A letter to the person I haven’t met yet.
I don’t know your name yet. I don’t know what your laugh sounds like, what memories shaped you, or what dreams you carry quietly in your heart. Somewhere you are living a life that will one day cross paths with mine. Before that happens, I want you to know the real me. Not just the easy parts, but the parts that make me who I am. I have a stubborn streak, and sometimes it takes a little patience to get through to me. I am an overthinker. My mind has a habit of creating every possible outcome, thought, and feeling. There will be moments when I need reassurance, not because I don’t trust you, but because my brain sometimes notices the smallest changes. A different tone, or one less kiss at the end of a message, can make me wonder if something is wrong. I also hope you’ll get to know the other sides of me. The person who confidently sings lyrics completely wrong, somehow manages to trip over nothing, and asks completely random questions like, “Do you think Tom Hanks has ever had a bowl of Shreddies?” The person who will laugh with you, support you, and love you in all the small ways that matter. Despite my imperfections, you will never have to question how much you mean to me.
Before we meet, I hope you are becoming someone who knows their worth, just as I am learning to know mine. Sometimes we need time to heal from the experiences that have shaped us. I am learning that not every negative thing I see about myself needs fixing. I know I need to take a breath before being so quick to shut people out, and to let people in a little more instead of always being reserved. I also need to accept that the overthinking part of me is something I will probably always carry. There will be days where it takes more patience to understand me, but I will never stop trying to manage it better. One thing I won’t be able to manage is being normal when I’m comfortable. I hope to become someone you feel safe with and hope to share a life with. I think the problem these days is that we sometimes expect people to arrive without triggers, without difficult days, and without a past that doesn’t sometimes bleed into the present. We create a version of someone in our minds, and when they show us the parts we didn’t expect, we start questioning who they really are. I hope we can both remember that being human means having imperfect moments, and true love is about understanding the whole person, not just the easiest parts.
I am not looking for someone flawless. I hope you have dreams, fears, and stories that I get to discover along the way. Please know that you can talk to me about anything, and you don’t have to carry everything alone or pretend to be strong all the time. If there is an issue, we face it together and not in silence. We laugh together, but we also cry together. I hope you feel like you can be completely yourself with me. The geeky side, the soppy side, the annoying side, the frustrated side, whatever version of yourself it is, I want the real, honest one. I hope you leave me with no toilet roll in the bathroom, make yourself a drink and don’t clear up the mess you’ve made, or even create an obstacle course of your shoes on the floor. Will I moan at you for these things? Yes. Will I secretly be laughing to myself inside? Also yes. You will equally have to put up with the floordrobe in the bedroom, my hair clogging up the bath plug, and the fact that books have to be organised by genre and alphabetical order. But that’s part of it, right? Loving someone isn’t just loving the polished version they show the world. It’s embracing the unfiltered, everyday parts of them too. The habits, the quirks, and all the little things that make them who they are.
Love is a daily choice, and as long as we continue to choose each other through the ordinary days, the good days, and the difficult days, then we could build something extremely special together. There might be times where we bring out the worst in one another, but as long as we take responsibility for our behaviour, and offer meaningful apologies, then we give ourselves the best chance of finding our way back to each other. As long as we remember it is not us against each other, it is us against the problem, then we will always still be a team. There might be times where we have to sit uncomfortably with our feelings, where a hug or the simple touch of a hand won’t solve everything, but it will remind us that we are not facing it alone. Times where we need patience and grace to give each other room to be imperfect, grumpy, or overwhelmed, without taking it personally. I hope we both feel appreciated and seen, as well as emotionally safe. There will be a healthy balance of being deeply connected as a couple, while also maintaining our own identities. Most importantly I hope we are each other’s safe spaces and homes, because home isn’t a place, it is a person.
There are many little things I hope we share. The quiet mornings, laughing at our inside jokes, late-night chats about our hopes and dreams, supporting each other’s goals, feeling safe enough to be vulnerable, and so much more. I hope we have a favourite place that we can revisit, a song that we can call ours, and so many memories that belong to only us. Maybe we’ll debate over snacks, or duet in the car very badly because I am tone deaf, or I’ll bring you a drink after a long day. I can’t guarantee that you won’t catch me randomly looking at you because I absolutely will. Not in a creepy way, I promise. If you’re as introverted as me, we won’t need to attend loads of social events. A quiet night in watching films would be perfect, or even a walk somewhere where we may have to see a few species of peoples, because unfortunately we can’t always be vampires and stay indoors. You will probably be one of my first thoughts in the morning and one of my last at night. I will want to hear everything about your day, who we dislike and whether they are worth the prison time… just kidding. I will also remind you of how much I appreciate you, especially of all the things you think I don’t see.
I hope we meet at the right time. Sometimes people meet before they are ready. That doesn’t mean I want you to have learnt every lesson before meeting me, or to be someone who already knows exactly how to love me without ever having to learn me. I’m not waiting for you to have no issues. We all do, humans are messy. I just mean I hope you are ready for the journey, to grow together and to keep learning about each other along the way. To help one another through the process and become better versions of ourselves together. Being without you has given me the time to focus on myself, my goals and the person I want to become. It has allowed me to feel complete on my own rather than needing a relationship to feel whole. Being independent has taught me who I am when no one else is watching, and that there is a difference between needing someone and wanting someone. I am mostly grateful for the wrong relationships, and the dating failures. They have helped me understand myself, appreciate the right things, and recognise what matters when the right person eventually comes along. Maybe all those wrong turns weren’t really wrong after all, because somehow they have led me to you.
What I promise to bring into your life is kindness, loyalty, patience, encouragement, honesty and a willingness to grow. Your emotions and needs will be validated, even when I may not fully understand them. Your happiness will always matter to me, and I will respect your boundaries and communicate honestly. I can bring the fun too, but I’m sorry in advance for the sudden bursts of energy at 10pm at night, or the fact that you may have to listen to every random idea that enters my head. As much as people call me the ice queen, and as much as I want to believe that’s true, don’t be surprised if you get random texts throughout the day telling you how much you mean to me. I might pretend I’m not that soppy, but unfortunately for you, I probably will be. Whatever waits for us, you’re the person I want to meet it with. If it’s with you, then yes to everything. I want to experience every version of life, with every version of you. To know you through every age we haven’t reached yet. To look at you decades from now and still recognise the person I would choose to do all of this again with. Because if I had to live every year before you all over again, just to arrive at this life with you, I would. A thousand times over.
Until we meet, I hope you are surrounded by love. I hope you are chasing your dreams, laughing often, and becoming the person you are meant to be. Me? I will keep growing, learning, making mistakes, laughing at things I probably shouldn’t, and trying to become someone I am proud of. I won’t put my life on hold waiting for you, because I know that when we eventually meet, I want to have a life of my own to bring into ours. Maybe you’re somewhere right now doing exactly the same. Maybe you’re having a completely ordinary day, unaware that one day you will mean so much to me. Maybe you’ve already walked past me somewhere and neither of us realised. Or maybe you are still miles away, living a life that will eventually lead you to mine. I hope you know that wherever you are, there is someone out there who is excited to meet you one day. I have no idea when that day will come, or what it will look like. I don’t know where we’ll meet, what we’ll say, knowing me, I’ll probably say something awkward instead. When it does happen, I hope we both look back at the lives we lived before each other, and realise they were all somehow leading us here. We weren’t promised this, and we could’ve so easily missed each other, and yet, here we are.
Amy x
