Eighteen years. That sounds like a long time, but it’s not. Not when you think about it. Eighteen years is nothing.
It’s hard to believe that eighteen years ago we were just two ordinary people with two very different last names. It’s almost hard to conceive of a period before we were together.
I look at old photos of you and me, and I marvel at how we’ve both morphed over the years. Somehow you’ve become more lovely, more poised, and your skin looks too smooth for your age. Somehow my nose had gotten bigger. So has my butt.
Sometimes I travel backward in my memory and try to recall what we were like when we first met. Do you ever do that?
I close my eyes and attempt to remember how naïve I was. And I try to recapture a little bit of that boy I used to be.
God. I miss being naïve. I miss being stupid, unafraid, and even foolish. I was less worried about little things back then. I was braver. More
trusting. Dumber, yes. But I also laughed more. Even when the world looked like it was falling apart, I managed to laugh often.
But somewhere along the way I grew up. I became more cautious, more responsible. In some ways, I’d like to think I’ve improved with age, over these last eighteen years, but in many ways, I’ve become stiffer.
Even so, do you know what hasn’t changed in the last eighteen years? Us. We are still you and me. We are still Sean and Jamie.
When we first met, you were balm to my broken heart. I had a pitiful childhood fraught with the suicide of a parent, violence, loss, bereavement. Then, all of a sudden, I met you.
Overnight, my world got bigger. My mind shifted into a more beautiful place. Suddenly, this life wasn’t dark and hazy, it was sunny and…