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Before falling in love with me, you must know about the constant meltdowns and the night of endless tears. You must know about my damaged heart and my broken soul. Be aware that I never sleep at night and sometimes I talk in my sleep. You must know about my need for your love as well as my distant personality and constant fear of losing you. And the way I eat too fast for my own good.

But once you fall in love with that part of me, you can fall in love with my tender smile and warm embrace. You can fall in love with the way I'll warm your hands in mine and tickle your feet with my toes. You can fall in love with the way I'll make you soup when you're sick and how I'll kiss you when you get hurt. Fall in love with the way I laugh and the soft spoken words of encouragement I'll give to you. You can either fall in love with me as a whole or not love me at all.

- Julie Martinez

***

I'm perfectly flawed. There's a word for it - imperfection, and it's not something I've ever been able to accept. The strive for perfection has been a struggle my entire life. Be the perfect friend. Be the perfect daughter. Be that perfect girl. 

But none of that is ever attainable.

Perfection doesn't exist.

But he told me that I am perfect in his eyes.

That's why on my strive to be perfect for him, I lost pieces of me that I loved.

I guess he was right when he told me I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know that what I wanted was to be able to be vulnerable with someone without judgement. That I wanted to be accepted for the spirit that lays beneath my physical body. That I needed to start breathing again.

***

You don't tell me mushy things like "you're perfect just the way you are" like how he did. Girls love hearing things like that. I liked (and still do) it too.

Instead, you tell me all my flaws, like how little I know about Internal Medicine, how muscular my thighs are, how coarse my hair is and how much it falls all over your pillow and bedsheets. You tell me I have a pair of big brown eyes ... , flat nose bridge AND a big mouth. You laugh when there's acne on my face and point it out when my eyebrows are out of shape. 

It made me more conscious about myself, and sometimes it irritates me too because hey, if you're bothered about it so much, go look for a better girl then.

But it also gives me weird sense of relief/comfort.

Because you see all the things that I hate about myself and have tried so badly to hide, but still choose to stay.

You see the groggy, cranky side of me at 5-ish in the morning but still tell me that I'm beautiful even when I have unruly bed hair and snot in my eyes, and patiently wake me up with smooches all over my face ♥︎

You complain about me being whiny and tell me I'm troublesome all the time, (which is totally unfathomable because I have never made you do anything at all okay!) , yet you still try your best to put up with my messy thoughts and insecurities, and attend to my need for constant attention even when you're already dead tired from work.

You are not the kind of guy who pay attention to tiny details - like how I style my hair differently today, or the scent I wear, but I can tell that you actually take note of every single thing I say and that's all that matters because all I ever need from you, is your attention.

You argue with me about my take on homosexuality, and many other social issues that we randomly discuss about. You tell me that at 24, I still think like a kid who lives in a world full of fairytales but sadly fairytales don't exist. You tell me that reality is harsh, so is life. Instead of telling me that you'll protect me so that I can live a princess life -  the way how everyone I've met before you had told me, you tell me that it's time to grow up and live in the real world.

Every now and then it dawns on me how different we both are from each other - we are almost at the extremes of both spectrums. The only similarity we both share in common is that we are both high in ego. We are going to have different opinions in so many things and with this said, there will be a lot of disputes because nobody's gonna give in first.

But as much as the future (that I picture) horrifies me, I'm actually starting to like our life together. I'm still learning how to love the way you need to be loved, and I hope you are too.