Vachon Imagined

“Have a day that is as beautiful as you are,” is something I often say to my girlfriend, who I adore.

Over the years, I have tolerated things from her I would not tolerate from others—cancelled plans, difficulty pinning her down for time together, moments where work takes priority over me, or over us. I have stayed with it because I love her.

And I imagine she might say she has tolerated me too—my need to talk through everything, to open the corners of my mind that she would sometimes rather not enter, especially when it requires her to loosen control or sit in uncertainty.

She is, and we both agree, the yin to my yang.

When I am in the clouds, she brings me back to the ground. She offers a perspective I have learned not to defend against or dismiss, but to trust. We listen to each other. Not always perfectly, not always evenly, and perhaps not even always in the same moment.

But we listen.

In this world—or maybe not even to each other at times—we are not perfect. Yet I have often had the sense that something in each of us recognizes a kind of perfection through our imperfections: through what we can tolerate, through choosing love over pressure, presence over fear.

And over time, that has become its own kind of understanding.

Not agreement.

Not control.

But something quieter.

Something lived.

Something lives between two people in love—something shared, something unspoken, something only they can understand. A love that survives time, distortion, and control, and still remains itself.