The Year We Actually Lived

Gratitude doesn’t always feel like a lesson. Sometimes it looks like a camera roll full of proof

A year sounds clean when you say it.

Twelve months.
Four seasons.
A neat little shape the calendar gives you so you can pretend love has edges.

It doesn’t.

A year with someone is grocery bags and car rides.
Bad moods and soft mornings.
Dinners that worked.
Dinners that absolutely did not.
The same stories retold because they get better when the right person is listening.

It is learning someone’s face in every weather.

Tired.
Hungry.
Annoyed.
Half-asleep.
Lit up.
Trying not to cry.
Trying not to laugh.
Failing at both.

Recently, I looked back through the photos and videos I took this past year.

Dangerous work.

The camera roll does not care what version of the year you’ve been carrying in your head.

It just shows you what happened.

Little squares of proof that life was happening while you were busy getting through it.

And there it was.

Concerts.
Travel.
Trips.
Holidays.
Shopping.
Celebrations.
Birthdays.
Tea time.
Brunch.

Crying, too.

Because of course crying.
A real year has some of that in it.

Projects.
Lazy mornings.
Sleeping in.
Us curled up like the world could wait.
Cats pressed near us like tiny dramatic landlords.

Hiking in the snow.
Little getaways.
Too much fun in the hot tub and sauna.
The kind where your skin is warm and your brain finally shuts up.

Kayaking.
Wakeboarding.
Skateboarding.
Comedy shows.

Me drinking too much coffee, which is less a memory and more a recurring character flaw.

All these little clips of us moving through a life I didn’t fully realize I would miss while I was inside it.

Not because it is over.

Because looking back makes the small things hit harder.

The blurry photo.
The stupid laugh.
The outfit.
The drive.
The hotel room.
The snack run.
The hand reaching into the frame.
The look on your face when you didn’t know I was filming.

That one always gets me.

The unguarded stuff.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, without making a speech about it, you became part of the furniture of my soul.

The sacred kind.

The way a room feels different when your shoes are by the door.
The way silence stops being empty because you are inside it with me.

I didn’t know a year could do that.

I thought love was supposed to arrive like lightning.

Some violent proof.
Some cinematic disaster with better lighting.

And sure.

There was lightning.

The nervous charge.
The first reach.
The kiss you pretend not to replay.
The private smile you wear like you stole something.

But the miracle was what stayed after.

After the long day.
After the weird tone.
After the misunderstanding.
After one of us got quiet and the other had to learn not to take the silence personally.

That is where love either becomes real or starts looking for the exit.

Ours became real.

Not perfect.

God, no.

Perfect love is for people who don’t have nervous systems.

Ours has had teeth.
Weather.
Static.
Small repairs made with tired hands.

Moments where I had to look at myself and realize I was not always as easy to love as I imagined in the trailer.

But you stayed close enough for the truth.

And I am grateful for that.

Not in the greeting card way.

In the rougher way.

The way a man gets quiet when he realizes someone has been loving him while he was still becoming someone easier to receive it.

I am grateful for your laugh.

Because it changes the air.

You laugh and the room feels easier to be in.
The day loosens up.
Whatever was heavy stops taking itself so seriously.

I am grateful for the way you bring life into things.

A small plan becomes an event.
A drink becomes a memory.
A walk becomes a little movie neither of us meant to film.

You make the ordinary feel dressed up because you came near it.

Like ABBA should start playing from nowhere.
Like the floor might forgive us for being adults.

Maybe that is what this year taught me.

Love is not just who holds you when you fall apart.

It is also who gets you to dance again.

Not always literally.

Though sometimes, yes.

Sometimes love is ridiculous.

Thank God.

Sometimes it is music too bright for your mood.
A stupid smile you can’t kill.
Three minutes and thirty seconds where the world can wait because your person is there and the song knows what it’s doing.

That counts too.

The lightness counts.

The laughter counts.

The animal voices.
The inside jokes.
The shared looks across a room.
The way one word can drag an entire memory behind it.

That is intimacy.

Not just the naked parts.

The known parts.

The parts nobody else would understand if they read the transcript.

A year of that is not small.

A year of being witnessed in all your moods is not small.

A year of someone seeing the less charming edits and still reaching for your hand is not small.

Looking back, I keep thinking,

We were there.
We did that.
We got through that.
We made that weird little day into ours.

We stood in snow.
We sat at tables.
We packed bags.
We changed plans.
We got tired.
We got dressed up.
We got quiet.
We got hungry.
We got close again.

We made a life out of fragments.

And somehow the fragments became a year.

So gratitude is not just being thankful that you are here.

It is being thankful for who I became because you were here.

Softer, in places.
Braver, in others.
More aware of my edges.
More aware of how much love asks when it is not just fantasy anymore.

You made me look at the way I show up.

The way I listen.
The way I get scared.
The way I confuse protection with distance.
The way I want closeness, then act surprised when closeness asks me to be honest.

That is the irritating beauty of real love.

It does not let you stay as your favorite excuse.

It holds up a mirror, kisses your face, and says,

There.
That part too.

And because it is you, I want to keep trying.

In the normal ways.

The ones that matter.

Better on Tuesday.
Kinder after work.
More present in the car.
Less guarded when the conversation gets hard.
More willing to reach first.

That is romance too.

Not the kind they sell.

The kind that survives contact with the calendar.

The kind that knows the difference between a spark and a fire.

Fire has to be tended.

With humor.
Patience.
Curiosity.
Coffee.
Apologies that do not come dressed as arguments.
Small hands finding each other again after the world gets loud.

One year in, I do not feel like I have solved love.

Good.

Love should not be solved.

Solved things get put away.

But I know this.

I am glad it is you.

Glad for the nights.
Glad for the mornings.
Glad for the dumb errands.
Glad for the kisses.
Glad for the hard talks that did not end us.
Glad for the softness that found its way back.

Glad for us one year ago, nervous and new.

Glad for us now, more known, more real, a little bruised in the places that prove we have actually been alive together.

And glad for whatever version comes next.

Because sometimes love is not the locked door opening.

Sometimes love is the music starting.

Sometimes love is scrolling through a year of photos and realizing the thing you kept calling ordinary was your life being good to you.

The concerts.
The trips.
The holidays.
The crying.
The brunch.
The cats.
The snow.
The sauna.
The coffee.
The water.
The laughter.
The quiet.

All of it.

And there you are.

Still here.

Still beautiful.

Still making the room feel less like a room and more like a place I might survive my own life.

So let the song play.

Let it be a little corny.
Let it sparkle where I usually brood.
Let it put glitter on the wound and call that healing.

One year later, I understand gratitude differently.

It is not just saying thank you for what stayed.

It is looking back at everything we lived through, everything we made, everything we almost forgot to appreciate while it was happening, and realizing the year was full.

Not perfect.

Full.

And maybe that is better.

Perfect is usually staged.

Full is alive.

Full has coffee breath and hotel towels.
Full has snow in its shoes.
Full has cat hair on the blanket.
Full has one more song.
Full has your laugh in the next room.

Full has us.

And baby,

that is what I’m grateful for.

// Scorpio Veil

The Door Isn’t Locked