Dear John

You and I were wrong from the start. Having met through a group of online friends should have been the first indicator. Add to that we were both still married, even though separated. I had a son. There were warning flags everywhere, but we ignored them due to intense attraction. At least we had that going for us.

It was that attraction that must have made you loan me money when I couldn't afford my rent and had to use food stamps to eat. That might also explain your gift of a trip for the two of us to Florida and arranging for someone to watch Hammy only three months after we started dating. Could that attraction have been so strong as to suggest I move in with you when my rent got to be too much? We definitely weren't thinking. That's for sure.

I should have known it was going to be a disaster when I did move in and you didn't help me unpack a single box or when I sold my pretty entertainment center and newer furniture so you could keep yours. Or maybe the long hours spent on the computer could have clued me in. But I think I thought I was in love by that time.

Two years later, you asked me to marry you, and I said yes against my better judgment. I think we fought nonstop those short three months. Why did you want to rush it after waiting so long? I don't know. I do know I wondered many times whether I was doing the right thing or not. But I didn't feel nervous when I married you, and I didn't want to run away. Having been through that before, I figured it was a pretty good indicator that things would be all right.

Then I found out I was pregnant, and I cried, because I wasn't ready. You assured me it would be fine. You convinced me I was ready and we would be happy. Then I lost the baby only a week before the magic twelve weeks, and we both cried, because our belief was broken. It was then we realized we really were ready to be parents again, and we were, nearly a year later.

But that time wasn't all happy and easy. It was hard and lonely too. We moved. You went to school full time alongside your full time job, and you still ran the BBS. It was busy, and I will always feel like you missed out on a very special time in our lives. I wonder if you remember what it felt like to feel the baby move.

That baby is in school now. Hammy is moving on to middle school. We are in a different state. You have a different job and a different hobby. We have remained the same.

Will it always be so? Honestly, I've never seen it any other way. We have gone through so many things that split many couples apart, but we choose to argue over who left the plate on the coffee table. You have been with me when I nearly died, when I lost our baby, when I hemorrhaged from the miscarriage, when I've been just plain crazy, through every silly notion I've had, through three moves (one halfway across the country) and when we had a very sick child. We work well together. We handle the crises and are left with only the mundane to make us crazy. We have defied a million odds just by staying married as long as we have, and we will defy a million more by staying together forever.

You don't complete me. We don't have holes that need filled. For you to complete me would mean I need you. I don't need you. I want you, and I think that is much more powerful than any need could ever be. I am with you by choice, not by necessity. I'm no longer just attracted to you. I love you.

As we just pass ten years together and come upon the eighth anniversary of your marriage proposal, which just so happens to be your birthday, I am thankful for our time together. I look forward to the day when the numbers of years in your life with me outnumber the years without me, but I know you don't want to rush it. I don't want to either, because I want to savor it, even the moments when I'm angry with you. It's a unique balance that makes us richer and closer and stronger. (Don't get any wrong ideas that you can aggravate me more! Remember, I said balance.)

I hope this gift to you is what I meant it to be: understanding, reassurance, love. I am sadly reserved in expressing these things to you on a regular basis. I won't try to be better at it. I will be better at it, because I love you, and I want you to know that�

always,�

at all times,�

forever.

Happy Birthday, my dear!

Cindy