When people talk about love, they make it sound easy. They picture butterflies, anniversaries, the kind of romance you see in movies. But love—our love—doesn’t live in those clichés. It isn’t always wrapped in bows or sealed in perfect photos. It’s raw. It’s heavy. And some days, it feels more like survival than romance.
Our love has lived in hospital rooms, under fluorescent lights that make everything look too sharp, too real. It’s lived in parking lots where we sat in silence after hearing news that shattered us, too broken to speak, too scared to cry because once you start, you’re afraid you’ll never stop.
Love is Pete’s hands steadying me when my body betrays me again. It’s him watching my face for pain I try to hide, and me watching his shoulders carry the kind of weight no one ever signs up for. It’s him learning to read the scans in my eyes before the doctors even say the words.
It’s ugly, too. It’s arguments born from fear, doors closing too hard, words we wish we could swallow back. It’s both of us saying “I’m fine” when neither of us is. It’s him trying to protect me from his breaking, and me trying to protect him from mine—even when the truth is we’re both already cracked.
And the vows—God, the vows. For better or worse. In sickness and in health. We said those words wide-eyed, believing the “worse” part was a far-off storm we’d never really have to weather. But the storm came early. And it’s relentless. Some days I feel guilty that his forever looks like this—that his wife is scans and side effects and a countdown no one wants to name.
But he stays. He stays when it’s unbearable, when it’s exhausting, when it’s terrifying. He stays even though love has become hospitals, meds, and a thousand stolen little moments we cling to like lifelines.
This is love in the middle of the mess: brutal, unpolished, stripped bare. It’s love that knows what it’s going to lose, and chooses to hold on anyway. That’s what makes it both the hardest and the most devastatingly beautiful thing I’ve ever known.
A Letter to You, Pete
Pete, I need you to hear this—not just today, but always.
You are the reason I keep waking up and fighting, even when the fight feels impossible. You are the warmth in the coldest nights, the steady hand when everything shakes, the proof that home isn’t a place—it’s a person.
I see you, even when you think I don’t. I see the weight in your eyes, the way exhaustion pulls at you, the quiet sacrifices you make. I know you break in private because you don’t want me to see it. And I hate that this disease has demanded so much from you. That your forever turned into medication schedules, waiting rooms, and the constant ache of fear.
But please believe me when I say this: you are not just my caretaker. You are not just my protector. You are the love of my life in every possible way. Cancer can strip away my health, my body, my future—but it will never touch the truth that I was yours. Every second of every day, I was yours.
If the only thing I leave behind is the way I loved you, then I will have left behind everything that mattered. And when you look back one day, I hope you remember not just the mess, not just the pain—but the way we still found each other in the middle of it.
Because Pete—my love, my safe place, my always—you were my forever. Even if I couldn’t stay for all of it.
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