Cooper bought me a new journal.
I ran out of space in my first one, the one Grams got me, about two weeks ago. It didn’t feel right to get a new one, so I just wrote on blank sleeves of paper and shoved them between the pages of the one already filled. I was perfectly content with that process, but I think the mess of it drove Cooper mad, and so here it is, my new journal.
It’s kind of fitting, actually, that today would be the day I write my first entry. One year ago on this day, I was pulling into a small diner in Mobile, Alabama, thinking all I’d be leaving with was a full stomach of steak and eggs.
But I left with her.
One year. One year of time, of places seen and moments lived. Three-hundred and sixty-five mornings waking up next to her. Thousands of minutes and seconds discovering more of who she is, who she was, who we both are now — together.
Looking back on the man I was when I met her is like trying to remember a dream that fled in the morning light. When I was him, he was crystal clear. I understood him. I knew how he worked. Now, he seems pixelated and dark, the memory of him unclear, the man I’ve become nowhere near the one who once existed.
It feels different, writing in this journal instead of the one Grams gave me. I still remember my first entry, how I didn’t want to write at all, didn’t want to feel, to think, to explain. But Cooper has opened me up. With her, the nights haven’t been so dark, and neither have my thoughts.
With her, I’ve found purpose.
And a dog, but that was just a bonus.
It wasn’t an easy journey, especially starting where we did. I still remember our first month in Seattle together, stumbling through, neither of us knowing how to walk yet but holding tight to each other for balance, anyway. We took each day as it came, enrolling Cooper in school, finding a place to live, and, though I was reluctant, finding me a new therapist, and a new medication — one that didn’t make me feel like a zombie. One that helped.
There are still bad days.
But there are less of them now.
About two months into our new reality, I started doing yoga with Cooper. Every morning, sometimes again in the evening, and when she got busier with school, I did it on my own.
And then I studied it.
And meditated.
And before I knew it, I was teaching, running my own class at the studio around the corner from our apartment with a focus on overcoming depression and anxiety. It started with just me and Cooper, but it’s grown over time, and now, I meet with anywhere from twenty to fifty students each week. Even if it’s just for that hour that we’re on our mats, I know they don’t feel so alone.
Purpose.
When I met Cooper, I thought yoga was bullshit. In all fairness, I thought everything was bullshit. She tells me all the time that I opened her eyes to a new world, to new beliefs, but she did the same for me.
Now, I think yoga centers me. Meditation helps quiet my mind. I may not look to the universe for answers the way Cooper does, but I believe now. I believe in the power of being quiet, of being still, of addressing my thoughts instead of hiding from them.
And I believe in her, in that girl with the glasses too big for her face, and the way she loves me — completely, with everything that she is, without a single fear of being hurt.
Last night, Cooper was studying at our dining room table. It’s this small, banged-up thing we picked up from a garage sale when we first moved here. It’s nothing special, doesn’t match a damn thing either, but I love that table because it’s where we eat our breakfast and drink our coffee. It’s where we fight and where we makeup, too. It’s where she cried the day she found out her mother passed away, and where I held her in my arms, vowing to put the pieces of her broken heart back together again.
But last night, sitting at that table, she was just studying. Her hair was in the most tangled braid I’ve ever seen, hanging over her left shoulder, her pencil eraser chewed down to the metal as she flipped through her textbook and notecards. Her glasses had slipped down the bridge of her nose, her eyes dark and tired above where they rested, and Kalo hadn’t left the cozy spot at her feet all night.
She was on her third cup of coffee when she spilled a bit of it, droplets splattering the pages of her textbook as she cursed under her breath. And one of those droplets hit her scarf, too — the blue one, the same one she’d worn the night we walked through Grants Pass. It landed right next to the other stain, worn and faded now, almost invisible. But I knew it was there.
Cooper wiped at the new mess, frustrated almost to the point of tears, until it hit her.
Then, she just looked at me, and I knew her thoughts without her speaking them.
And just like the night that first stain was made, I kissed her. It was all I could do. I couldn’t not kiss her.
One year.
Every day of it filled with moments like that, with the two of us holding onto each other for dear life, trying to figure everything out together. A year of discovery, of laughter, and, though the me who existed this time last year would have sworn it wasn’t possible, a year of love, too.
There’s a ring in the drawer next to my side of the bed, buried under my socks, pushed to the far back corner so Cooper doesn’t find it. She doesn’t know I have it, doesn’t know I bought it over the summer, that it’s been burning a hole in that drawer ever since. I wanted to give it to her that very night, wanted to drop to my knees in front of our couch where we were watching some stupid movie that neither of us really cared about.
But with Cooper, everything needs to be magical — most of all this.
I may not be Prince Charming, and what we have is far from a fairytale, but I promised myself that day we walked down the hike from Palouse Falls that I would spend every day of my fucking life working to become the man who deserved her, the man she’d dreamed of, the man I wanted to be.
Last night, when I’d finished kissing her breathless, when the new stains on her scarf had dried as one with the other, Cooper asked me what made me happy. My answer was honest and sure.
Living, and you.
Cooper, if you’re reading this, which I’m sure you are, since I’m going to press it face down on our table with a note that says READ THE FIRST ENTRY — YES, I ACTUALLY WANT YOU TO READ IT, then meet me at Pier 57 at the wheel.
Because I want you, Cooper. For now. Forever. And though my journal did a great job of telling you how I felt about you one year ago, of giving you the words I couldn’t say out loud, it can’t do justice for what I feel for you now.
This, I have to tell you in person.
See you soon, Little Penny.
Drive fast.