I’m in love with you. I feel a physical pull to you like I never have to anyone before, like there’s magnets inside us, and sometimes I see my hand moving toward yours and I have to stop it from touching you. I love your smile, your eyes, your laugh, your soul—I love how you’re serious and how you play, and I love your generous heart, your empathy, your truth-seeking, and your intelligence. I love that you dropped out of college and went back like I did, and that you love your family like I do, and that you’re disorganized and spontaneous but not too much, and that you don’t get everything done but you are fully present in everything you do.

I wish you were a pastor for a church that valued me—a woman—as your full spiritual equal. I wish you believed in pro-choice and loved the gays and would have s** with me outside of marriage. I wish you believed it was okay for people to be Muslim or Jewish or atheist and that God would not condemn them to hell based on unbelief. I hate that this can’t happen because you stand for things that make my blood boil.