Dear Victoria,
Something you should know about me is that I am a highly chaotic person. I felt like you should know this as a prologue to my letter of proposal to you.
A psychotherapist once asked me if I thought I was a narcissist, which angered me slightly and gave me pause. I managed to deflect the question skillfully. Even with a formal diagnosis (which I did not receive), I do not argue with professionals. However, it is true that I do not experience guilt, embarrassment, or shame - nor do I have much of a conscience. I only feel bad for lying when I am caught doing so, which is rare and only if I do not think I carried a sufficient enough ruse to deserve getting away with it. Those admissions aside, I have trained my moral compass to always be true, and have read philosophy voraciously to ensure I make morally sound decisions. That same psychotherapist once speculated that my IQ was somewhere in the neighborhood of 130. I do not believe that a mere number is a fair measure of my intelligence.
Regarding my character - at my worst, I am moody and irascible. As a young man, I learned to keep my ego in check to appease my employers and colleagues. By reading this letter, you will realize that I have a high - but earnestly healthy - self-image. And I would do my damndest to uphold that for you and myself and the health of our relationship. At my best, I am a role model, an upstanding citizen in the community, and most of the people who truly know me adore and respect me. I am excellent at first impressions - as you are well aware. Except when I met your father, of course. How silly of me, but I suppose I was just nervous.
Although my intentions with you are true, sometimes my past actions betray less than favorable outcomes. I have fallen in love a handful of times but have only been in two of what you could call "serious" entanglements. My first love was a petite Soviet-born Jew. She later revealed she was mad with what you might call "the Soviet spirit" - all passion and - with what little sense she had, she spent it on schooling and an immersion in popular culture. My second love was a homely but brilliant and tall, long-legged goddess. She was half a decade my junior and after just a year, our respective careers took us in separate directions in life and living. Since my lost loves, I have practiced polyamorousness for many years, but it is quite a complicated thing to have an affair - sanctioned or unsanctioned.
You must also know that I have fallen in love and lust with those of both sexes, and have not dabbled with folks of a transgender persuasion, but androgynous presentation is so attractive to me. I also cheated on both of my past loves - multiple times - with both men and women - but I would be eternally faithful to you. I do enjoy being watched, and I am a bit of a voyeur, but if we were to make love, no one would be allowed in our quarters, nor would they be allowed to film. I am gregariously possessive when I am in love. I trust you are highly dissimilar, given your withdrawn demeanor and coy shyness when we are near each other. I am not concerned with this, as I truly believe opposites attract, and our personalities - as you reveal yours to me over the course of our formalized courtship - will undoubtedly complement each other.
In addition to people, I also enjoy exploring other sorts of nouns - places and things. Some time ago I went to a festival - the kind where people do drugs of all sorts and dance to psychedelic music - and compared numbers with those in my camp of like ruffians. I learned that my "body count" was relatively high compared to my peers - somewhere near the upper 33rd percentile. Another marker from my past is - historically, I suffered from a series of addictions. I once practiced selling drugs - cocaine, cannabis, hallucinogenic mushrooms, research chemicals, pharmaceuticals - not to support these addictions (for I have always been independently wealthy) - but to experience the thrill of entrepreneurship. I built a tidy business and was actually able to make a nice living off my work. After a few months, though, I sensed the police were catching on, as I saw them patrolling the neighborhood at all hours of the day, and so I stopped. It was not worth the risk of getting caught.
I wish to conclude this confession of my strong affection for you with my longer-term aspirations for our union. I love children. In my ideal world, I would have 20 children - one born each year of the rest of my working adult life. I would like to continue working until 60 or 65 and drift into a leisure-filled retirement. I plan on still being independently wealthy, as investments compound over time, and being patriarch of a large, beautiful, and majestic family. I also love animals, but do not think I would want to take care of a dog or cat for the decade or two that they would live. I think I would prefer a reptile - a snake, turtle, or other cold-blooded creature that makes its home in a tank. That sounds much easier and less time-intensive.
And that’s the lot of it. Do any of these past things preclude me from being worthy of your love from now to the interminable future? I am yours.
If you will have me,
𝓑𝓲𝓵𝓵
Bill