You are There, I am Here

To the one who keeps bringing the world to me,

A week ago, you were a name on my screen.

A voice I wanted to hear again.

A beginning I didn’t yet know how to name.

And now...

Somewhere between your stories and my laughter, I fell in love with you.

I don’t know the exact moment.

Maybe it happened in all the little moments, gathering quietly, until my heart had made a home for you before I knew to look for one.

Lately, I have been smiling more than I have in years.

The kind of smile that arrives before I can explain it.

The kind that stays with me after your name disappears from my screen.

Your eyes brighten my life.

When I see them, it feels as if a small sun has found its way into the room.

And you...

You are so beautiful to me.

So impossibly attractive that everyone I once thought could make my heart skip now seems like a passing thought.

You have become the face my mind returns to.

The one that makes my breath catch, my cheeks warm, my whole body remember that you are there.

Thousands of miles away.

And yet, somehow, I feel like I am living in two places at once.

Here, where I am.

There, wherever you go.

Because you take me with you.

You stay on video with me as you move through your day, turning the camera towards the things you see, sharing the passing world as if there is room for me inside it.

A street, a view, a small thing you might have noticed alone.

And suddenly, I am there too.

I cannot stand beside you yet.

But through your eyes, I get to look.

Through your voice, I get to come along.

You make the distance feel less like a wall and more like a window you keep opening for me.

I love that you show me.

I love the thought that, somewhere in the middle of your day, you see something and want me to see it too.

And our calls...

You get sleepy, but you never say you want to go.

You say you want to talk.

Then sleep steals you for a second.

You wake up smiling, find me there, and begin again.

Over and over.

I keep thinking about that: how you drift away and return, how your smile finds me even through a screen, how neither of us seems quite ready to let the night end.

Those moments are small.

But they glow in my memory like windows lit from the inside.

And then there was what you did for me.

The happiness came so suddenly, so completely, that my eyes filled before I could hold it back.

I cried.

Not from hurt.

From pure joy.

Because you had thought of me so tenderly, and for a moment my heart could not contain how lucky it felt.

Your kindness found a quiet, hidden place in me and lit it up.

I wish you could have seen what those tears meant.

How grateful I was.

How loved I felt in that moment.

Since you came into my life, I have started singing to myself.

Little songs with nowhere to go except around the room and back into my heart.

I have started looking at myself with more kindness.

For so long, I thought I might never learn how to love myself.

And now, slowly, I am beginning.

Maybe happiness has a way of turning the light back towards us.

Maybe being cherished, even in small ways, helps us remember that we are worth cherishing too.

I don’t want to make you responsible for the love I am learning to give myself.

But I want you to know that something in me has opened.

My heart is awake.

My days have colour again.

Sometimes I catch myself thinking, Oh my God. How did I get so lucky?

And beneath all that happiness, there is a small, trembling fear.

Giving someone your whole heart is frightening when you don’t know what will come back.

I am scared of offering all of myself and receiving only pieces in return.

I am scared because this matters.

Because you matter.

Still, I don’t want fear to be the loudest voice in me.

I want to try.

I want to see what we can make of these miles, one day, one call, one glimpse of your world at a time.

If it works, if we find our way across all this distance and into the same place, I think I will be the happiest person alive.

I imagine seeing you there, no screen between us, and thinking:

Oh my God. You’re really here.

And if it doesn’t, I will gather the pieces of myself and learn how to heal.

I will try to keep the hurt from turning into hate.

I will still wish you happiness.

I will still hope life is gentle with you.

And I will never forget the way you made me feel in this moment of my life.

The girl who smiled more.

Who sang to herself.

Who cried from pure joy because someone had thought of her.

Who felt butterflies again, and began to believe that she could love herself.

I will remember how the world looked while I was loving you.

How a voice from thousands of miles away could make an ordinary day feel touched by wonder.

A week ago, I was trying to name the beginning.

Now I know what I feel.

I love you.

I don’t know what the future will bring us.

But I am grateful for this: for your eyes, your sleepy smile, the pieces of your world you keep turning towards me, and the way your presence has made my own life feel beautiful again.

You are there.

I am here.

And every time you show me what you see, the distance grows a little softer.

For a moment, the world becomes ours to look at together.

With my heart awake across the miles,

Yours,
Shallu