to topher, on the day for out-loud-love

dear valentine (and all you other lovers who read along),

so today is our eighth valentine's day, and we celebrated by you sending me three hoops-and-yoyo e-cards using my hallmark account that i sneakily used your debit card to pay for months ago, having lunch hot and ready when i got home from teaching, and then taking on the burden of teaching our private class by yourself while i napped this weird stomach sickness away.

so, in sum, it's been great! and i didn't even mention the rose you got me OR the other awesome gifts you brought home from our students that they sent to give to me. 

today, in this public letter, i'm ready to admit to the world something that we used to battle about many moons ago.  

here and now, it shall be known that i, kate marsh, aged twenty six years, hair color brown, eye color hazel, bending towards blind with a visual acuity of 20/400, heretofore shall readily exclaim:

i do not believe you are my soul mate, topher.

for many years now, i've been trying to get you to believe in fate and soul mates and meant-to-be-ness.  but somehow, in letting the discussion lie, and letting life to take its course, i've come to realize that it must be a blue moon because you, dear sir, were right.  

i don't think there is fate. i don't think there is one person, made for me.  i don't think it was kismet that we met, or that we fell in love or that we married.  i don't think there was some stronger force at work causing our paths to cross, alighting our eyes with the recognition of a soul's true other half.

(if it was, we probably would have had that moment way back in september 2003, the two times that we met that i don't remember?)

but i do believe that i am married to the one person who can make me happiest.  i do believe that it was fantastic luck that we both chose (what seemed to me, a girl from idaho) a random college and maybe it was the funniness of life that you happened to become good friends with my good friends and eventually we met.

i do believe that you are my best friend and the person whose personality and interests and general life values align best with mine, and i do believe that when we purposely chose each other, we chose somebody whom we felt we could love, enjoy, and grow with for many years to come.

not to say that we agree on everything, and enjoy each other always.  rather, we match quite nicely because of our witty-to-us repartee and loving cajoling that lends itself to solving disagreements without major emotional damage.  we fit because we both believe that knowledge lends itself to self betterment, and self betterment in your spouse can only lead to self betterment for yourself.  we work because we both know that a marriage, and love between two people, can only flourish if both people choose to foster it with small and large displays of affection every single day.

what i think i like best about us though, and how i know we are not soul mates, is that we have grown and changed immensely in the eight years since our first valentine's day.  our opinions, our interests, our life projections and trajectory have all changed considerably since we were eighteen.

thank god.

but most important, dear non-soul-mate, i want you to know that despite how much i love baking,

i will always love you more.  

xxoo,
kate

thoughts?