If all goes well, and as hoped, you'll be reading these words on your eighteenth birthday. This started as a half- fogged idea, a what-if? of sorts. One day, out of the blue, I just decided that it would be really cool to make you a webpage, just for you and I, as a fun little project, and maybe as a way to learn HTML and CSS.
I didn't think I would end up loving you as fiercely as I do; it's never that I counted that out, it's more about how surprised I was at how fast I gave in. Have you ever thought about potential love? It's the love that you know you could have for someone, the love you could have if you nurtured it and let it grow, didn't hide it or cut it down. After those first texts, those first hesitant conversations, I felt it. And I immediately tried to run from it, because I had a laundry list of reasons a mile long about why I couldn't be in a relationship, why I shouldn't. But, for some reason, I ignored my laundry list that had eaten all but two other potential loves in the past, and I kept talking to you. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I didn't like you at the start of everything and that I was trying to run away, it was more that I was scared. I was scared to put my heart out there, scared of rejection, scared of what could go wrong. But I don't regret a thing, none of it at all. Happy birthday, my love.