Something I realized recently: first impressions are very important to me. Not as in “I care how people come across.” In fact, I often enjoy nearly everyone I meet, or find something to love in most (as you know, maybe to a fault). Yet I painstakingly consider how I am perceived—how someone meeting me for the first time will decide what or who I am.

Before I met you, believe it or not, 90 percent of my thoughts that day were on how you would see me. I worried, I stressed, I honestly calculated; I tried to strategize. I didn’t have a Lamborghini or a flashy outfit, but inside I was trying to be so cool. In the years since, I’ve heard about the stressing and fretting over meeting “Cool Alex” from the internet you had gone through. I’ve seen the videos and heard the stories from your mom and friends, who you called to quell your fears about meeting me. Yet I couldn’t see any of it—whether it was the fact you couldn’t even bother to zip up your backpack, or because of your jokes you slyly and calmly dispensed.

A few nights before, we stayed up late talking on the phone as I paced in Tony and Heather’s garage. It was then that I fashioned the fear. The fear of meeting this woman, who seemed to be genuinely placed here by God to be my counterpart—my best friend, maybe the love of my life. I feared that we would meet the next day and somehow, I would screw up what I thought was my destiny. We connected on a level I hadn’t experienced before. I had made friends fast and never met a stranger, but on the phone that night, I listened to someone who seemed to fit inside my brain like a key. Your voice on the other end of the phone filled me with joy and excited me in a way an amazing album does on first listen. I was inspired and jazzed up. I didn’t feel like I had to do the standard stifling of my overexcitement and eccentric energy. I could be myself. I felt more comfortable in that early conversation than I felt with some of my best friends and closest family.

So, at that Peet’s Coffee, I discovered your beautiful energy in person, and it instantly filled my heart, my stomach, my face, my toes with butterflies. It was as if I had trapped a massive flight of monarchs in my bones and stuffed them down, only to burst out the second I stepped out of my car in the parking lot. I saw no signs of worry in your laissez-faire yet attentive vibe, and that unzipped backpack-purse. It is a testament to your ability to stuff those butterflies down as well. You seemed so calm and stoic, yet bubbly and sweet without effort. We walked through the Target movie-book-vinyl section, and it was right then and there that I decided I’d marry you—or at least try really hard. Amongst the bottomless bin of five-dollar DVDs, Colleen Hoover paperbacks, and 18 vinyl records, I saw a woman who I needed to spend the rest of my life with.

In the next few days, we got so close, so fast. I found that you legitimately completed me. It’s been nothing different the last three years. I simply know that I am not just a better version of myself with you, but I am the truest version. As most people in my life have reminded me plenty, you changed my life.

Cassandra Joy Ells, I vow never to take you for granted in any area of our lives. You are the single most caring person I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.

I vow to listen to all the wisdom you often supply. You have an outlook on the world and expertise that rivals anyone’s. You have already taught me so much, and I will continue to look to you for advice and insight.

I vow to always be your supporter and confidant in any and all conflict you face. God knows that you have been mine on every single occasion. I vow that when you are apprehensive, I will quell those fears as best I am able. When I have worried, I couldn’t imagine anyone else more capable of helping me to serenity.

I vow to support you wherever your aspirations take you. There isn’t one absurd idea or late-night project that you have resisted.

I vow to be patient; to give you the grace that God gives me every day. I vow to be tolerant and serene across our lives.

I have revisited this many times. Now I write it as you sleep next to me and find it hard to fathom being blessed enough to get to spend the rest of my life with you. I simply couldn’t be happier to continue our lives together, whatever that may entail. I know we will adventure, we will grow, we will discover. I find the promise of that to be so exciting and, at the same time, tremendously comforting.

Søren Kierkegaard once wrote,

“When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world—no matter how imperfect—becomes rich and beautiful; it consists solely of opportunities for love.”

I have entered this realm, and I aspire to construct our love to be as such. I love you Cass, you are me. Forever and always.