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I don’t think I say this enough.
Not properly, anyway.
I say “I love you” all the time. It comes easy with you. It feels natural, like breathing, like something I don’t even have to think about anymore. But this is a bit different.
This is me actually stopping and putting it into words.
I’m grateful for you.
Not just in a general way, not just something you say because it sounds nice. I mean it properly. Deep down, every single day, even on the days where everything feels messy or stressful or a bit too much.
Because somehow, in the middle of all of that, I still have you. And I don’t take that for granted.
Sometimes I think about how unlikely all of this is. The way our lives work, the way everything moves so fast, the pressure, the expectations, the constant noise around us. It would’ve been so easy for us to miss each other completely. To just be teammates, or even just two people who crossed paths and moved on.
But we didn’t.
We found each other in the middle of all of that, and somehow we made it work. We kept choosing each other, over and over again, even when it wasn’t easy, even when it would’ve been simpler not to.
And now this is our life.
The matches, the training, the travel, all the crazy moments that people only see from the outside. The things people dream about. But my favourite parts of it aren’t even the big things. It’s the small ones.
Coming home and knowing you’re there.
You falling asleep next to me, always somehow ending up half on my side of the bed.
The way you look at me when you’re about to laugh, like you already know I’ve said something stupid but you love it anyway.
The quiet moments where it’s just us, no one watching, no one expecting anything from us.
I get to have all of that because of you. I get to love you, openly in our own space, even if the rest of the world doesn’t always see it the same way. I get to build a life with you, piece by piece, in between everything else we have going on.
And that means more to me than anything else.
You are… I don’t even know how to explain it properly without sounding dramatic. But you really do feel like something I didn’t earn. Like something that just showed up in my life and changed it completely for the better.
My gift from heaven.
I don’t know about heaven or fate or any of that in a serious way, but if there is something out there that decides these things, then they got it right with you. Because you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Not football. Not anything else. You.
And I know I don’t always say it like this. I know I joke around, I mess with you, I act like things don’t affect me as much as they do.
But I feel it. All of it. Every day. So yeah. Thank you. For staying. For choosing me. For loving me the way you do.
I’ll never stop being grateful that I get to call you mine.