Yours

November 15th

Dear Sophia,

I love you. I was up early again today. I was excited to see you. I didn’t need the alarm or anything. I was awake before it went off. I was lying in bed looking at the ceiling thinking about you when I heard it go. I think I might not use it anymore. I should just try to go to bed at a reasonable time instead.

I need to get used to being in a routine for when we live together. It’ll be important to get up and have breakfast together before you go off to work.

I think it’s kind of cheating to use an alarm to get me up. It’s like saying that on my own I wouldn’t put in the effort to get up and see you. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s no effort for me to get up and see you. I’d put in effort if I had to but I don’t. With us everything is easy and natural. I’m up and ready to see you on time because I want to be. I’ll just have to start forcing myself to go to bed earlier so I don’t get stuck in that tired sleepless cycle again. It won’t be difficult at all because it’s for us. I’d do anything for us.

I think it’s best I don’t hear the radio in the morning either. The first thing you hear is the news. This morning that meant the first thing I heard about was a bomb going off somewhere or other. I wasn’t really listening and didn’t know whether I was meant to panic or not. I didn’t know if it was near to where you were or if it affected you somehow. I assumed it was somewhere abroad but you can never be certain.

Then it was a story about flooding and how it’s going to rain lots over the next week or two. They said lots of people won’t be able to get to work. I started to worry it might mean we won’t see each other. Then it had some clips of a woman speaking who said her living room had flooded yesterday. I didn’t know if the woman lived near you. I didn’t know how local it was. I didn’t know if it affected you somehow. I didn’t know if the water had got into your house and broken your phones so you couldn’t call for help.

Then it was this story about how unemployment is still really high. They said they still recommend people live carefully and keep an eye on their money. That made me worry about our future. We don’t want to raise our kids in a world where they can’t get what they need and we can’t give them what they want. It made me feel awful about things. It was panic after panic after panic.

I couldn’t take it. I turned it off after the first few headlines. I don’t know how people wake up to that every morning. If you listened to the radio all day you’d get all that put into your brain on the hour every hour. Then people go home and watch it on T.V to hear about it even more and then read about it on the internet too and it’s just the same worrying stuff over and over and over. It’s awful. I just want to know how you are. I don’t want to worry about all this other stuff.

Once I saw you all that other stuff went away again. It was just words coming out of a box in my room. That’s why I think I should get rid of the alarm. All my worries came out of it today. If it’s just you and me then there’s nothing to worry about.

I don’t need to worry as long as I have you.

I love you.

Yours,

Andrew