Work Text:
Dear Daniel Howell,
I’m sending this to you in an email because words don’t really exist, but I want them to, and though the cloud doesn’t really exist either, clouds outside do, and writing an email was easier than trying to put ink onto a physical cloud. Also, maybe this will help me actually have good punctuation for once. (Remind me later to look into getting Grammarly to spon me — my excessive use of exclamation points could use it!! (Proud of me yet, Danny? That was only two!!!))
Onto the real, super serious email…
No wait, that was too intense. This is a good email, a happy one. Well, sort of. It is quite existential, but you like that sort of thing, so maybe it is happy for you. And if it’s happy for you then it’s happy for me, generally.
But enough with the preamble:
Permanence is fake.
No matter how sturdy something seems, how well manufactured or developed, there’s no guarantee that it will last. In fact, the only guarantee is that it won’t. And maybe it’s natural as we get older to be more cognizant of life’s fragility, or maybe life really has gotten less durable. Your last few iPhones have certainly shattered a lot more easily than an old Nokia.
Some days, it feels like all I’m doing is breaking and replacing. But isn’t that part of what it means to be human?
Even aliveness doesn’t last. That can be really scary, like when Dads get sick or when you have your first niece and you’re suddenly aware of every potential choking hazard in sight. But the fact that life can end means that it also can begin. (I’m like 90% sure you’re going to want to debate this point later, but I’ll let you win if I can choose the Deliveroo afterwards.)
On a broader scale, one day the world will spin off its axis or stop spinning entirely or just implode or explode or however the science says all of this will end. Nothing is forever. We eventually have to say goodbye to everything. Our towns, our families, our careers, our homes, our past selves — the process of becoming is perhaps the closest thing to eternal that we’ve got.
So how fortunate are we to have a person with whom in tandem we can each become?
I want to hold on to you for as long as I am able. I want to grow and transform and become with you by my side. I want to take all the little temporaries of our lives and infuse them with a love whose magnitude they can’t contain.
Dan, I want to marry you.
The certificate is just a piece of paper, its ink merely a temporary tattoo. In time, it will decay and decompose and become the fertilizer for something new. But isn’t it beautiful that in its short existence as a paper, it could be used to declare a union as impossibly eternal as our ever-changing love?
This isn’t the first time I’ve asked you to marry me, and it certainly won’t be the last — even if you say yes, I have so many more proposal plans that I can’t wait to show you. (Let’s pretend I didn’t already tell you dozens of my ideas over these past few years because I was too excited to keep them secret.)
You’re currently moving a box, so I know you won’t read this until later, but I wanted to ask you now because 1. I love you and 2. inside of your box is a much smaller box — can you guess what’s in it?
Crunchy nut!
(But inside of that are our rings 😊)
Happy moving!
📧
you’re right you really do need grammarly — you didn’t even actually ask me the question
(answer’s still yes, though)
also, missed opportunity for subject line: “basically, i’m proposing”
📧
Daniel,
Basically
I’m
Trying to
(be)Come
Husbands
Love you! xxxx