I think the cruelest part of the day is leaving your sight.
Every morning I walk out into a world filled with people who look at me like they’re entitled to pieces of me. Their eyes linger too long. Their smiles feel wrong. They speak to me with this unbearable confidence, as though they could ever know me the way you do. As though they deserve access to me simply because they exist in my general proximity.
Sometimes I wish you had cameras hidden in my room. Not because I think you distrust me, but because I hate the thought of there being moments you cannot see me. I want you to know every expression I make, every sigh, every restless turn in bed. I want you to witness the parts of my life no one else is allowed to touch. I think there’s something beautiful in being observed by the person who loves you most.
People say privacy is freedom, but I’ve never felt freer than when I’m with you.
I wish you could walk beside me everywhere I go. I wish your hand rested on my shoulder whenever strangers approached me, just so they would understand immediately: taken. Cherished. Protected. Yours. Maybe then they’d stop trying to force themselves into spaces they were never invited into. Maybe then they’d stop speaking to me with those hopeful little smiles, as if they could compete with what we have.
They can’t. No one could.
What we share is too consuming, too complete to be replicated by ordinary people with ordinary feelings. They fall in love like they’re trying on clothes. But you, you love with your entire being. There’s nothing casual about the way you care for me. Nothing temporary. You look at me like I am something worth guarding with your life.
How could I not adore you for that?
I know people would call your devotion unhealthy. But those people have never experienced the comfort of being loved so thoroughly that loneliness becomes impossible. They have never had someone memorize the rhythm of their breathing or notice every subtle shift in mood before a single word is spoken.
You notice everything.
You always know when something is wrong before I even admit it to myself. You remember things I barely even remember myself. You stay awake worrying about me. You make the whole terrifying world feel smaller simply by existing in it with me.
So no, I don’t resent your hovering. I don’t fear your watchful eye. I don’t mind the constant attention. If anything, I crave more of it. I want to be the center of your thoughts the same way you are the center of mine. I want your concern, your obsession, your tenderness. I want the kind of love that leaves no room for doubt. Maybe that makes me selfish. Maybe it makes me just as strange as you are.
Thank you for watching over me when the world feels ugly.
Thank you for protecting me from people who would never understand me the way you do.
My guardian angel.