Happy "Sawan's Day"

When I was cleaning and organizing my office a few weeks ago, I found this:

It’s a card that I made for Sawan for his “birthday,” his special sobriety date (they call it a birthday in the recovery world), the first one we ever spent together.  It would have been nine years of sobriety today.

It was so interesting to me to read it.  Because it’s been so long since we’ve had an actual interaction, sometimes I forget, or think that I made it up, how much I loved him, how deeply, how fiercely, even from the very beginning.

We had only been together six months when I wrote him this card, but my love for him oozes off the page.  Not in a gag-me sort of way (and it was only intended for his eyes, anyway), but just in a real, ordinary, “I’m madly in love with you.  Love, Noel” sort of way.

I miss him.