Dear Alice β
Happy (belated) 3 years, my love! know this is a little overdue β but that's only because I wanted this to be perfect for you. This still isn't perfect, but as a PM I always encourage my engineers to ship early and often, so here goes nothing.
When I started building this little project, I didn't really know what I was doing. I just knew I wanted to create something personal, something that blended two things I care deeply about, the act of creating something, and expressing my love to you. As you can tell, this is still very much a mashup of random ideas, features, and whatever else I could conjure up. And somehow, that led me to buying aliceli.com (yes, I really did that lol). It's all yours. Maybe it's silly, but it felt like a small way to show much I believe in you, your story, and everything we're writing together. What started as a weekend idea turned into something more. I couldn't work on it when you were around, so I had to be a little sneaky, which made it kind of exciting too. This is the surprise that I was talking about. (P.S. If you're curious about how I built this, I shared the repo with you!)
By the time you see this, it may be 37 months π (so happy 37 months!). But three years (!!). It's hard to believe. And yet, in so many ways, it feels like we lived a whole lifetime together in just the past year. We graduated. We traveled the world. We moved to San Francisco. We moved in together. We ran (a lot) and will continue to run more. We made so many new friends. We navigated tougher moments and change together. We really grew, together.
Even the smallest bits of separation sting β and every time I'm away from you, I'm reminded just how deeply you're woven into my life. To miss someone is to love them so fully that their absence makes the world feel off. What a beautiful privilege that is.
I know I'm not always the easiest boyfriend. I nag, I am absent-minded, I don't share any complex thoughts, I stumble over my Mandarin, I consume too much brainrot (contagious), and I get wrapped up in worries that do't always matter. But I see those things, and I'm trying β I promise I'll keep doing better. Thank you for your patience, bao bei. For teaching me how to love more fully. For being my partner, my best friend, my home. For dreaming alongside me. And for choosing me, every single day. How lucky am I?
Here's to everything we've shared, and everything we've yet to build. I love you, ζε―ε».