January 17th, 2011

Moments just happen with their meaning determined afterward. So such was the case of a singular instance that occurred for me fifteen years ago now today. I viewed the past fourteen years of how it happened as a moment of coincidence, blind luck, fate, kismet, karma etc... since I couldn't say why, what or how I was brought to be at the right place at the right time for what it has meant to me. For the time I couldn't say if the ones before or after would have had the same lasting affect on me in which this one did. That thought partially changed late last year after finding something one day on a shelf again. It caused me to really reflect and look back in a way if there would have been another moment which would have been the same for me.

With that in mind there is a problem, well actually two, with this recent discovery. This moment never was published until last year in that SI: Heaven book. Then at the time, still am really, I was never a SI type of guy so either way I would never have come across it published or not around this time in 96. I had happened to see the book one day so decided to thumb through it when I found you on one page. Now had this image been published at the time I could say looking back it would have the same impact on me as the original one that changed me. As with the one that mattered this one simple photo was just of you on some sand dunes during a morning view with just a blanket around you. I can see the same thing I saw in your eyes then as was in the other when I look at it.

The past can't be changed nor does this change it anyways, it was the right place at the right time as who can say if I'd be writing this fifteen years later the same way? I've always viewed that first moment as one for one since then. That one moment of the one whom matters the most to me. It has always been a once in a lifetime moment with it being thereafter something more, I wouldn't be the same after it anymore. So if it was coincidence, blind luck, fate, kismet, karma it worked out as I had found you in that instant that has been with me, a part of me, the past fifteen years now. Since then my thoughts stopped being of one as they became for two in that moment on.

Thoughts, emotions, were born in that moment when I saw you then as I've only seen you since then, only you yourself. Nothing more has factored into my view of you from that first instant as with every since then, all I see is you. Everything that you bring out of me is still there, nothing has changed in what I feel for you. Through the good or bad I would have always been and would be there for you from that moment on. You are the woman I love and care for, I've meant it since the first moment, in ways I wished to have expressed them sooner, as they've only been meant for you.

Manon everything I've felt for and about you since the first moment has continued to grow. You're the only one I'd want to share them with, to feel them for. Always for you and always about you; I'd say them to you each and everyday. Any given time or place I'd say them, any and every moment for when they'd mean the most between you and I. I love you, I care for you, I'd miss you each day apart and would enjoy each day together. So while I can't say this to you today I'll always say them for you. With a deep heartfelt sincerity I mean what these words have represented to me for you.

Always be well and take care.

Always yours,
            Shawn
01/17/11