I fell in love hiking in the Andes and again in the cramped twin bed of a dorm room and yet again laying beneath a grand piano while Clair de Lune echoed through an empty concert hall near midnight. I believe I once fell in love in a single evening drinking microbrews and listening to The Killers moan their way through "Everything Will Be Alright" in a dank, dirty bar in Portland. I have loved at least a dozen novels with a commitment and passion most reserve for intimate relationships. I have listened to the work of certain composers on repeat so many times that my iTunes top ten features songs played thousands of times and likely puts me in the company of individuals labeled with some version of violent psychosis.

I come from a good family where loving is an assumption; I have walked through every day of my life with a complete understanding that in the world there are four other souls who mostly understand mine and would hop on a plane if requested. I have loved animals more deeply than many humans and dear (dearest) friends with a terrifying, unconditional ferocity. I found a kind and gentle man who loves me with the persistence of the sun rising and find shelter in our unlikely pairing.

I have felt in my very marrow the quiet of the woods at twilight and gazed upon a moose and calf in the light of dawn. I have placed my hand on the trunk of an old, gnarled tree and felt humbled by my brief, insignificant existence. I have observed elephants suckling their young and water buffalo warding off a pack of lions and slept beneath the stars on the sand-bottom of a dry river thousands of miles from home.

I have fallen in love with this world and the infinitely diverse creatures who reside here a thousand times over and yet I find myself humbled, yet again, in finding that my knowing is so naive.

My love for you is rooted in spit up and sleeplessness and desperation and anxiety and deep-seated prayers about the world you will inherit. Its foundation is a body destroyed by your delivery and several months of wondering why and what and how I did this to my life. It is raw and vulnerable and unceasing.

I find myself overwhelmed by its fullness at the most unlikely times. Tears come to my eyes in the early mornings, when it is just you and I and you have spent at least ten minutes organizing your bananas, blueberries, and cheerios into exact piles. When I look at you and tell you I love you and you grab both my cheeks in your hands, the tears are unexpectedly there. And when you laugh from the very marrow of your bones because a word like axe or crinkly or toot seems just ridiculous, my heart nears bursting. It is your love of books and music and the way you dance to the beat that destroy me. It is your gentleness of spirit and the kindness that is so inherent in everything you do. It is that I feel so wholly and utterly undeserving of such unhindered joy.

It is the quiet moments with you that are unexpected. It is not the fact that I love you that is surprising but the sheer violence of it. A love that exceeds all the other loves I have ever known. It is the kind of love that fills and fills and fills until it necessarily must spill over and infect every aspect of my reality.