Yesterday morning I woke up with a sudden urge to find all of the letters I wrote to my older self when I was a teenager falling in love with Jeffery. It's this thing I did for a few years, sort of like a time capsule. My 13-year-old self wrote to my 18-year-old self, up until I was 15 writing to my 20-year-old self. I felt like a journal or a blog couldn't really capture a sense of change because I could always flip back the pages and remember what it was like to write those words. This way there could be more reflection. And of course the older me didn't know that the younger me would write about Jeffery, but I was an emotional teenager and my love for him consumed me.

Now, eight years later as we plan our wedding, it is really interesting to see how our love has grown and changed. It has sunk all the way down into me and filled me like a liquid instead of resting on my chest and fluttering in my throat like it did when I was young.

February, 2003 age 17 and 14

May, 2011, age 23 and 26

Today is his last final of the semester and then I get my boyfriend back for the summer. We get to do wedding stuff, and go to Hawaii, and move, and watch movies together, and experiment with recipes, and bake goodies and explore the city.