lovely love

Ladies and gents, that envelope contains the first love letter I ever wrote to my Josh- back on February 14th (that's right) 2005. wow :) I think I explained this before - how we weren't quite dating and he didn't know my feelings were reciprocal until I gave him this letter. It was one of my most anxious moments sitting beside him as he read through it.

Now, as you know, I am quite a creative person and always have to be doing something. Before the blog (and you) got all my creative attention... there was Josh. I suppose you could say he was my muse. I wrote stories, comics, poems, letters, drawings and little love notes by the bucket-load. Actually, more like... by the BOX load- as he stored them in some gift boxes and shoe boxes. I realised not long ago that he didn't seem to have those sacred documents anymore. He explained they were still in the wardrobe of his old bedroom at his Mum's house. You could imagine my shock. I had to retrieve them before they became house-hold reading material. I had this horrible mental image of his mum and sister perusing the collection over breakfast going "Ooh, here's a good one!". I didn't want them to know exactly which parts of Josh I liked best, expressed via the art of poetry. I didn't REALLY write a penis poem or anything like that, but there are some fairly incriminating documents. Here are some pics of the more creative and less sickening displays of my affection..


 I made this booklet for Josh when he got Chicken Pox in 2005. We had only been dating for a few months and I wasn't allowed to visit him as his house was a disease-ridden quarantine zone. I'm pretty sure his brother and sister both had the pox too. Josh was 18 at this point so it hit him pretty hard. He was zonked out on Phenergan for about 2 weeks and I didn't hear from him. Of course I was freaked out and thought he was dying. Always melodramatic. When I got finally in touch with him he could remember reading the messages but then fell asleep for 3 days or something and forgot about them. What a relief. My boyfriend was now a junkie :) Here's a picture i stuck in there of us 'just as friends' at a dress up party in early 2005.

I love his embarrassed smile- it slowly rises from one corner like a fish-hook pulling at his lip :) I used to call it "The Hook" naturally. Below is a pirate book I made for some anniversary. Maybe like 74th day anniversary or something ridiculous like that.

When Josh tried to grow his first full beard I noticed the red hairs in it that I'd never noticed before- so came the name "Captain Red Beard". OMG check this out...

That's me nearly 6 years ago in full Pirate garb :) Anyway part of the reason I went through all the letters and drawings was because our 6 year anniversary is coming up this month and I was feeling nostalgic. As you can imagine, we toned down the amount of letters and gifts to one another and now do Birthdays, Yearly Anniversaries and Christmas only. It was getting insanely time consuming and it almost became this intense game of One-Upmanship that saw us colouring in pictures at 3am by lamp-light. I remember one Birthday Josh made me close my eyes while he put the finishing touches on a card he was making me. DRAW FOR ME JOSH, DRAWWWWW *whip-crack*

It is nice to look back on all that stuff, and it's also interesting to read what I had to say back then. I feel like I have been through a lot in the last 6 years have been doing lots of soul searching lately as I feel like I have changed beyond belief. Reading the letters, it is just clear to me now that I am still the same Jade... I just have a more busy and complicated life so I kinda live for myself and don't make a million presents all the time. I get too caught up in the trivial dramas of day-to-day life and forget birthdays until a week prior - not enough time to make comics. I would like to do more nice things for others this year - hopefully i can share this with y'all :)