Love is a powerful force that defies all logic and persuades even the most rigid of hearts. 

While we all describe love in our own way, true love for me, is being deeply understood and accepted for every fault. My secrets, the things I’m ashamed of and hide, block me from being able to fully love and be loved. 

We all have aspects of ourselves we hide from the world. Some of us hide more than others, but I’ve never been able to hide anything from you. 

You know all my stories, absorb all my tears, and not once have you betrayed me. You are my closest confidant, dearest friend, and one of the loves of my life.

 I remember the first time I saw you hanging all alone on that musty wall with no other instruments to keep you company. I thought to myself, how can something as magnificent as you be forgotten and left to collect dust? Something about you was lonely, and something inside I had long tried to deny mirrored your loneliness.

 In that moment I desperately wanted to comfort you, to prove to you that together, neither of us needed to be alone.  

You lured me in with your shiny cherry wood and blazing bronze strings that adorned your small, elegant frame.

You were perfect.

I freed you from your gilded cage and into my waiting hands you fell. I began tuning you back to health and running through familiar scales so we could get to know each other. 

It was clear to see the time you spent alone had damaged your once strong, vibrant strings but no amount of damage was going to scare me away from you.

 I noticed while strumming, you spoke in a haunted tone that illuminated the many years you had been kept prisoner in my grandfathers storage room. Your haunted sound matched with the sound of my heart and I sang to you the very first story of many. I sang of loneliness from the recent loss of my friend.

I asked you if you understood death because at 12 years old I still couldn’t comprehend where my best friend had gone, or when she would be back. 

  While working through the painful and brilliant memories you supported me every second, note for note, and I felt invigorated to share more. You never looked at me with pity, and you never tried to take away my pain, you allowed me to feel my emotions and only sought to understand. 

As you know, life is full of highs and lows, and through the lows we tuned each other back to health so we could sing together another day. Through the highs you cheered me on, filling my life with rich, beautiful music. Through all of this you witnessed every heartbreak and triumph. 

Not only did you comfort me you also challenged me, pushing me to be the best version of myself. I laugh when I remember the hours and hours of excruciating barre chord exercises you urged me to do to make our music encompass the world even further. This taught me to have a steel determination that allowed me to tell you even more stories of triumph. 

You emboldened me to share my heart with you, but also to share it with others through you. I learned who I was talking to you, and I shared that knowledge with those I loved so they could know me too. You introduced me to a deeper level of love than I had ever known and for that I am eternally grateful. 

While my family finds it endearing I still play you, my ‘old, childhood guitar’ to me you are not just a guitar, you are my trusted crypt containing every scrap of the woman I am today.