For You—Randa (Makdooseh)

Two years ago today, I promised you a forever I had only half imagined. I did not know yet that forever would feel like this — equal parts fire and tenderness, big dreams whispered at midnight, a life we are actively, stubbornly, beautifully building.

I want to tell you — properly, for once — that I notice. I notice the thousand little ways you hold our life together. The way you soften a hard day before I've even told you about it. The way you feed me, listen to me, keep track of the things I'd forget, and make space for the parts of me that don't always deserve it. You carry so much, so gently, that it almost seems effortless. It isn't. I see it. I am grateful for all of it.

Also — can we please address the fact that waking you up is the single hardest project I have ever undertaken? I have tried everything. Soft voice. Less soft voice. Coffee wafted past your nose like some kind of cartoon. Opening the blinds like a villain in act two. You have perfected the art of answering "I'm up" while being demonstrably, unequivocally, not up. Honestly — it's my favorite war to lose. Every single morning. For the rest of my life.

We started in Valencia — small rooms, big plans, laughter bouncing off half-unpacked boxes. And now we are in Burbank, and the rooms are a little bigger, and so are we, and so is this love. The drive between those two houses is short. The distance we traveled as us, to get there, is the most beautiful map I know.

We are not a quiet story, you and I. We are ambitious. We are going to be extraordinary — together. Every goal I set is bigger because you are next to it. Every win tastes better because you are in it. I can already see the life we are building: bold, bright, unreasonably good. And the best part isn't the wins we haven't had yet — it's knowing, without a flicker of doubt, that whatever we become, we become it together.

You are my Makdooseh. My RuRu. My fire on the days I need more, my joke when I've forgotten how to laugh, my partner in every single dream I have ever dared out loud. Whatever I am becoming, I am becoming it with you — and that is the only version worth being.

Happy two years, my love. Here is to everything ahead — the wins, the late nights, the impossibly good years we are about to have. I'm so ready. With you, always.