White pieces of paper, folded into the smallest of rectangles, begin to fill up a small jar on my nightstand. I placed this clear jar with a golden glittery heart and teal top on the stand the first of this year, and already it is starting to create a mound.

The idea is, that every time something wonderful happens, no matter how small, I will write about it and stick it in the jar. All year. When it is New Year Eve again, I will open the jar and read the tiny notes inside. No matter what has happened negatively that year, I will still be able to recall the good, because it will be staring at me in black and white.

How is it that on January 6th it is already a quarter of the way full? How many jars will I have to buy this year to fill up? What a wonderful thing to have to buy more of.

It has been almost a week now that Jordan and I have officially been together. But, for some reason, one that is hard for me to explain, it feels like we’ve been together for a much longer time.

I have had four significant relationships in my adult life so far, outside of the one I’m in currently. The first, with Daniel, made me fall in love for the first time. It taught me everything about loving someone, standing by someone, hell, even maybe marrying them. The second, Seth, taught me what it felt to date a rebound. We were rarely on the same page. He ended up cheating on me, and yet I still wanted him. It was unhealthy, but it was a phase I needed to go through. The next, Ben, was the most unhealthy of them all maybe. He was the self proclaimed “good guy” (who argued with me every day) and for a while, I thought, even through the fights and drinking, that he made me safer. But after a while, I just felt dead. I felt like I was walking around and couldn’t feel anything. He made me feel nothing for him. So when I left him, and left that life behind, I needed someone to make me feel alive.

Enter: Jason. Jason was the worst, because I fell for him like you’d fall once you made the decision to jump out of that plane. Only, the parachute never opened, and soon, that dangerous, off-kilter feeling of falling turned into one of panic. Did he love me anymore? Why did he pull back? Who is she? Why is she better?

He became the poster child for how not to treat a woman. Any guy I dated after him that remind me of him, I’d run in the opposite direction. He made me feel alive after Ben, something I so desperately needed to feel, but he also was killing me. He wasn’t my forever.

And then Jordan comes back into my life, and he makes me feel safe and stable. I don’t have to wonder how he feels, because he tells me. I don’t have to worry. If I’m jumping out of a plane, he’s not beside me, he’s attached to me, pulling the parachute with me. I am not alone in this relationship. We are both active participants. And we relentlessly participate in trying to make the other happy. And I am, happy, that is. I am at home with him. I’ve never understood how people thought people could be home more than when I’m wrapped up in his arms, talking about everything and anything.

I don’t have to worry about being perfect. He’s seen my flaws and tells me I’m beautiful in spite of them. I can be myself, the girl I’ve come to love. It’s the best kind of feeling in the world.

I think we all have to go through feeling what I’ve felt for each guy over my adult life. I think we need to fall for all the wrong ones, so when the right kind of guy comes along, we won’t take them for granted. Because if Jordan had come along sooner, I probably would have like so many of the “nice” guys before him.

xo