Collin

The speaker is recording a podcast episode for their partner, Colin, expressing their love and gratitude for him. They discuss how Colin has changed their perspective on love and healthy relationships, and how he has shown them that love can be good and make their life better. They appreciate Colin's love and support, and how he makes them a better person. The speaker also mentions Colin's intelligence, sense of humor, kindness, and selflessness. They express gratitude for Colin and how he is the perfect match for them. The speaker also believes that their late grandmother would have loved Colin. Hello, Colin, and welcome to my podcast. I try to think of things that I do well and that is talking and listening to myself talk. And you are a really great listener. So I thought maybe you could listen to me yap about you and why I love you and why you are so special. So I guess I want to start with this is a lot more awkward than I thought it was going to be. In my head, it was like this is a breeze. But I guess I'll just pretend like I'm talking to you and I'm not sitting in a room in the library basement that has like clear windows so people can see right in. But anyways, let me just pretend I'm a little podcaster. It's the first thing that I really want to talk about is how sorry I muted the microphone. It's how you've changed my perspective on love and on healthy relationships. I'm sure as I've talked about, which is blatantly obvious, but I grew up with divorced parents and so did you, which is, you know, right off the bat, something that just really made you relatable to me, which no other guy I had been with had experienced that before and really understood what that was like. But besides the point, through my experience with past relationships and also my experience being a witness of like my mother's romantic relationships, I really thought that love had no, that there was no way for love to be easy. Essentially, there was no way for love to make your life better. It was just something that we all had to go through. It was something that normally came on to you involuntarily and I kicked and screamed and fought any time I found myself falling in love or catching feelings because I thought this always leads to something bad. And then being with you showed me that it doesn't. That love can be good and normal and healthy and it can make you a better person and that partner can just make your day and complete your life in ways you didn't even think was possible. Love was always, it's something you have to work at, but I never knew that it wasn't something that you had to fight day and night, tooth and nail for. And the problem that I had with relationships, this huge vendetta that I had against it, which was one of the reasons that I was so opposed to being in a relationship when you met me, was I just thought that they all ended badly. There was no way for them to be good and that no matter how good they seemed in the moment, things would always go bad. But the problem wasn't being in a relationship, the problem was who I was in a relationship with. And that was hard to realize because it had been like a good couple of people, so I'd just come to that natural conclusion that love was not good, but love is so beautiful. Love is you, Colin. And our relationship has completely changed my perspective on life and on so many things because I believe in the power of another person loving you and you loving them back. And that might have sounded stupid, but it's true. Like love is so good and I have my bad days and I have my ups and downs with my mental health, but those moments when I can just like lay in your arms or just laugh at a stupid joke with you, those are some of the moments that I've waited my whole life for just to feel that comfortable with a person and to know that you don't and won't judge me for anything and that you are going to try your best as hard as you can to be there for me at the end of every single day. And that's a love I've never experienced and that I'm so beyond grateful that I have been blessed with meeting you. I had just kind of grown to accept the fact that I would always be the one that loved more, that there would never be a point in time where someone loved me back equally until I found myself in this relationship with you, that even after five months of dating, it never once has that faltered, that I've questioned that you loved me the way that I loved you and I know I pester you and you hate me and want me to die, but that's surface level anxiety that's not my heart because at my heart and at my core, I know that you love me and I know that you care about me and are just the kindest, sweetest individual I've ever known. You genuinely feel like my partner and my best friend, but also someone who's going to hold me accountable and who's going to push me to be the best version of myself. You don't sit back and say that I'm perfect. You push me to do better at school, to do my work, to clean my room, to get up early, to go to the gym and it's so incredible to have that balance that you love me enough to push me to be better, but you also accept me for where I'm at and you don't make me feel bad for not being up to some sort of standard. It's compromise, it is partnership and that is the ideal, that is the goal and that is where you get to a point where a relationship actually makes you a better person and it doesn't make you miserable. You genuinely make me a better person and you make me so happy and so ready to wake up in the morning and take on the day and I'm genuinely astounded that I could have a relationship that reaped that kind of benefit and that kind of love and that beautiful, comfortable environment and I'm so grateful and I love you every day for it. Music. Okay, I'm done with the sappy stuff for now. It really, this is literally being recorded the night before if I give this to you on your birthday because I have been busy and this was the time that I had to record it at the library ever since I got the idea in my OCC class and then I told Liz and Robert about it and they said it was stupid and now that I'm recording it, it does kind of feel stupid, but you wouldn't even let me know if it was stupid. You would just say that you loved it. So, I really do hope you genuinely like it and I want to talk to you about what I'm doing right now so bad, even though it's literally, I'll be able to tell you about it tomorrow, but I really want to tell you about it right now because I don't like doing anything in my life and not telling you about it. Everything that comes across my path reminds me of you and it's a story I have to tell you and is funny or is weird and I just need you to know it. It's like my entire brain needs to be cataloged to you at the end of the day or else I'm going to go crazy. I don't know. I can't keep that all inside. I just really want you to know everything that I know. You are at tutoring right now because, of course you are, because you are the smartest person that I know probably, but you're not like in your face about it smart. You're just like quiet, nerd smart and I love it. It's one of the things that drew me to you initially from that first Tinder hookup. I love a smart man and that is you. I love someone who's not an absolute doofus and can actually hold conversation. You literally held conversation with me for like seven hours, I don't know, for the first time we hung out and that made you really stand out to me. There was nothing you said where I was like, damn, he's a dumbass. Sometimes you say stuff now, but I'm just kidding. You also are incredibly funny and I don't tell you it often enough because I like to think I'm the funny one in a relationship, but I can say that we are both the funny ones in the relationship, but you make me laugh harder than anyone. I think that's so special and so important in a relationship, but also just something that we do best is being silly with each other and never taking anything too serious. I mean we get serious when we need to, but I love just laughing and being silly with you. I laugh with you until my stomach hurts and anything bad that's happened that day, I forget about it because I am laughing this whole time and that might be when I'm at my happiest. Sorry, why am I crying again? Another thing that I love about you is that you have the kindest heart of anyone I've ever met. I've never met someone so selfless and willing and ready to help other people. It is literally so astounding and so admirable because you are so generous. Even with the money that your church was going to give you today and you were like, I don't want to give it to charity. I would have been like, give it to me, I'm going to buy new pants, but you put others' needs before yourself and you are kind to a fault and you will put almost anyone in front of yourself. God, I know everyone who knows you wish they could say a big, big thank you. So here I am as the self-appointed president of the Collin Fan Club saying that on behalf of everyone who has ever had the privilege of meeting you, thank you for being just the kindest friend, brother, son, nephew, cousin, and boyfriend. After having a few bad boyfriends, my family was definitely very hesitant for me to date again, but I can say with full confidence that none of them could ever find a better match for me or think that they could find a better match for me. They think you are the most perfect fit and the most perfect man and my mom often says that I need to be nicer to you because you are so kind and treat me so well. I mean, in fact, I was talking to her about you today and she was like, he is just the sweetest, kindest soul and I know God is looking down at you as one of his children and is so proud of all of the good works that you've done. When I was growing up, my grandmother always told me to find someone, to marry someone who was exactly like my grandfather because as she said, he was the perfect husband and the perfect father. He was, he is truly an amazing, selfless, kind man. And although my mama died five years ago, I can say with full and absolute confidence that she would have loved you. She would have absolutely loved you. She would have pinched your cheeks and said how much of an adorable, awesome, kind man you were. And the night that my grandmother came to me in that dream and I got to tell her about you, I truly believe that that was her. And I'm so grateful for the opportunity to be able to tell her about you because it's hard not to believe that she said you to me, how much she would have loved you. Okay, once again, enough of this happy stuff. Oh my God. Okay, I think I'm going to start to wrap up this podcast because the library closes, well the media center closes in 13 minutes and I want to be able to slightly edit this and make sure I get it on a flash drive before this closes. So, let's do our concluding remarks. Colin, I promise I'm going to find other gifts for you, but this is something that I wanted to make just from the bottom of my heart to let you know what a wonderful, incredible, kind, selfless, intelligent, funny, amazing, handsome man you are. And to know you is to love you and anybody who has gotten the privilege to know you has to be so grateful for that. I know sometimes you struggle to believe it, we all struggle to believe it sometimes, but you are truly one of the best people I have ever met and I'm so grateful for our paths crossing, crossing, crossing. Anyways, I just wanted you to have physical or I guess auditory evidence of how much I love you and how I feel about you because I know I don't express it as much as I should maybe every single day, but I feel it every single day and I want you to always have this to look back on and to know how much I love you. You think you're the shit, you're not even the fart. Yeah.