Harrison Avenue // H.S.

Harry's Vows

Originally written on a set list from one of Harry's shows. 

...

I used to keep track of the amounts of times I fell in love with you. At one point I even had a tally going in one of my journals and I thought maybe that would be something I could share today- but there was a week where I put a mark down every single day and I thought it might be a little excessive to go through that list. So instead, I'm just going to say three of the times I fell in love with Ellison.

The first time it was less you and more the idea of you. Because it was the first day I met you and you know I'm a sap, but I don't quite believe in true love at first sight. I think that takes a little bit of work. I knew at the time that Matt had a purpose in dragging me to that party I first met you at. I was tired, had a decent case of jet-lag but the moment I saw you it felt like shots of espresso suddenly found their way into my system and I had completely forgot that I had been traveling the entire day. Matt wanted me to meet you and I knew in that moment that even if you didn't speak to me again for the rest of the summer, you'd be in my head. Because, Elle, you're quite beautiful- extremely beautiful actually, and I know you were doing your best not to be friendly to me but somehow that drew me in even more.

Then you told me a story about how you imagined your life and I could tell that you were more than just beautiful and maybe a little mean, because your mind was beautiful too and you really weren't that mean. I really didn't know anything about you but I had this feeling in my gut when you finished that story... well, I had this want to be the other half of it and that's when I fell in love with that story too, and the idea of you in it.

I can't pinpoint the second time I fell in love with you- the first real love. But it was early in that first summer.

The second time I'm going to talk about though is about a year after the first time we met. We had been living in New York for months by then and you hadn't been able to paint for most of that time... or you were but it was this cycle of almost self-destruction, because it wasn't working like it used to and that was so difficult. This was in your first flat and I remember I came over and it looked like you had torn the place apart. There was almost this crazed look in your eyes when you answered the door and I was genuinely a little scared, Ellison. You made me sit on your bed and told me not to speak at all. So I sat there, quiet, and just watched you... just like I did during the first summer.

That time when I fell in love it was because of your eyes... or more the change in them from crazed to this look of an epiphany. Something clicked. I swear there were colors bursting around you, like this explosion of you, because you were back... your painting was back and I was in love.

Your certainty was something I've always admired about you. You were so certain you were going to paint when I first met you. You were so certain that we couldn't manage to be friends, which, granted wasn't my favorite certainty of yours. You were always so certain of everything, like you had everything figured out already and I never knew how you did it.

You're the best friend I've ever had... even from the beginning when you were kind of shit at being a friend at times. You unknowingly changed my perspective- my life really. I wasn't in a great place when I met you and I never would have thought that having a friend who gave me no sympathy for that would be the one to turn it all around, but you were that friend. You pushed me to find my own certainty, you made me do crazy things like steal boxed wine from liquor stores and drive across an entire state for the day just to see the sunrise. And those few months when you weren't my best friend were the absolute hardest.

The third time I'm going to talk about isn't actually the third time, really, it's the hundredth time, actually an even higher number than that. This one happened only a few days ago and it almost shocked me that I could still feel it as deeply as I did considering we've been together for nearly seven years, but that only felt like a good sign.

I had told a horrid joke, so awful that I won't even repeat it here, and you laughed so loudly that it startled me. Of course, you also said some words I also won't repeat here because there are children, but that wasn't the important part anyways... it was the laugh and again the look in your eyes. You didn't just laugh to humor me, and I know you do that sometimes. You laughed because you love me as much as I love you and these nearly seven years together have somehow made my horrible jokes funnier to you than the opposite. I fell in love again- for the hundredth, two-hundredth, I don't even know, time.

I think the best part of us is that we don't just love each other the way most couples do- it's so much deeper than that, because we were best friends first and still are now. I love you in the way that I want to snog your face off when I see you across the room in a busy place. But I also love you in the way I feel so incredibly proud when I go to an art show and see something that you painted on the wall.

I can promise a lot to you and I can promise that I'll follow through on every one of them, but I think the thing that matters the most is that I know that during this forever I will continue to fall in love with you over and over again. That's the thing I'm most certain about. I'm excited to see how that changes, how we continue to grow, and I'm most excited for that to be with you.

I once compared you to a street- Grey Street- but you're not just a street, you're the whole damn world.