Happy Birthday, Love

Darling, what more can I say that I have not said thousands of times over? That I love you? That I've always loved and will always love you?

Truth be told, I fell in love with you because of your darkness. Not your curly auburn hair or the soft brown eyes or the Cupid out of Caravaggio looks, though it certainly helped. No, it was is the darkness that had drawn me to you - like moth to a fire. And what draws me is that, reveling in the darkness as you are, you've never been overwhelmed in it like Nicolas had been. There's this quiet smoldering pain that illuminates the darkness all the more. My dark prince, you built me a castle of Cimmerian shade and hid me in layers upon layers of insulating gloom. In the sanctuary of the crepuscule and in your protective arms I am snug and secure as never before.

My omnipresent guiding angel, you've always been there to lead me through life with answers. Answers that I need but could never voice. These are the doubts and the fear that haunt me night and day. These are the questions that break me down and eat me up from the insides. And there is that tragedy that no one seems to understand. As Melchior so perfectly puts it: there's no one to see who can see to my soul. You help me discover who I am and isn't that one of the greatest essence of love? To find yourself through love?

You swing from periods of hedonistic denial of a higher power to bouts of zealotry but there is no mistaking the passion in your soul. You're enshrouded in your own anguish but it doesn't overwhelm; rather it ebbs and throbs in harmony, like the pulsing of a heart. You sometimes lose yourself and it is in those times of vulnerability that I ache for you all the more.

I could love you with an ardence that could burn us both to cinders and yet I could love you like the gentle waves lapping at the shore. Sometimes it feels as if my heart is brimming and overflowing with love that I couldn't contain anymore and yet I would go on the next day, at perfect harmony with love again. I could love you to the point of delirium and in that moment of hysteria I found the ephemeral peace.

Who are you to stir such emotions in me? Yet, even when I ask this question I know the answer, know it indisputably as you might know it.

It seems that of all the languages in the world, there is nothing that expresses as much as these words: I love you. It has always been love, pure and simple, intricate and divine; and there is nothing more nor less to it.

Happy 531st Birthday!

Love always and forever,
Sheryl.