To the Little Girl Who Was, Is, and Still Exists Within Me,

The lover girl. I honor you.

I remember your dreamy mind, always thinking deeply and beyond what an average kid considers from moment to moment. You always yearned for love.

You never received it and didn’t know what it looked like—not one bit. But you never stopped believing in it. The fairy tales and fantasies. Dreaming of being like the princesses in all the classic stories. Growing up as a hopeless romantic without even knowing what that meant. You never stopped believing. You never stopped believing that love was meant for you.

Thank you. Thank you for holding on so tightly to the idea of something you never saw or experienced, but somehow knew, with everything in you, that it was real and that you deserved it, because it existed within you.

I’m writing this to tell you that you found it. Not only truly and wholeheartedly within yourself, but within another person. You experienced true love with the last person you ever thought it would be. But now, as an adult looking back, it all makes sense. Everything makes sense, leading you to your fairy tale.

You had to find it within yourself first to be able to fully embrace it. Because you are love. Love is so innate for you that once you went looking for it within, and when you demanded love from without, it came.

He came. Your person. He arrived at the most awkward time—as he had many times in the past, but you never saw it. You never understood it, so you ran from it. But this time, Gab, you heard him differently. You heard him differently, and your heart ripped open at the sound of his voice telling you that you were all in, and that you were in this together.

In that moment, something within you began to wake up—something that had been dormant for so long, but you knew was still there.

You didn’t quite understand it at first. But you never stopped believing in what you felt within you, just as you never stopped believing all those years. Because you knew it was love. It was hard to grasp that everything you wanted and needed, and everything that you are, was right in front of you the entire time. But it all made sense too.

You found your person. You found your heart. The kid within you, and the kid who’s been right beside you for a decade. The person who quite literally forces you to grow and pushes you to be your best self—just by being himself.

I am writing this to let you know that you can rest. You got your fairy tale. You finally experienced love—true, unconditional love. The kind of love that no one can take from you, and nothing can penetrate that bond. Nothing can destroy what exists between you and him. You both know it. Your heart is so safe with him.

So, little me, little Gab, know that your love story is coming. It has already arrived; you just can’t see it yet. But keep believing. You will see that those fairy tales are real and the magic is real.

I love you, and I honor you.