Sunday, August 05, 2012

To the man I love

Dear Z,

I know you don't read this anymore, because anything I've had to say to you for the past three and a half years I've turned to you and said aloud. For the past three and half years, you've been right by my side. I'm writing it anyway, because I have about three decades' worth of stuff to tell you, and you are past hearing me.

The last time I wrote one of these letters, it was an apology. I bruised your already tender feelings even more by being unthinking, and I wanted  - no, needed - to say sorry. I didn't intend this one to be an apology, too, but I have to start it off with one. I'm sorry I took you for granted. I got so used to you being a rock that I kind of forgot how crystalline your core is - like mine, I have to acknowledge. I see so many things about you that I have in myself, and it has given me comfort since the beginning. There are things which are alien to me, too, like your absolute insistence that you neither desire nor require love. I know better. I have seen you after soaking up the rain of love from me, my family, my community. I remember the tension and anger in every line of your body when you came to me, and I remember when I started to see it leak away, leaving a smiling, gentle, happy man in its absence. I know that the home we shared was precious to you, maybe more than you are willing to admit even to yourself. I told you a few days ago that I knew how terrifying it is to know that someone can see you with clarity that you can't turn on yourself, and I know you are worried I am going to use it as a weapon against you. I'm sorry that we never took the chance to ease all those fears. I am so sorry you never came to me.

The crazy thing - and I mean it sounds dumb, it sounds like the sort of thing they would put in a book that had high heeled shoes on the cover - is that once I made peace with my own insecurities, I have never doubted you. Not once. Even when I was blue and swirling in darkness. Even when you threatened to walk out the night before our epic trip. I think it was a mistake then, and I think it's a mistake now. I say it because I have never personally known two people to do what we did - be the absolute best versions of ourselves we could be for each other. I believe to my toes that we are meant to be together to keep us straight in the world.

This summer has been a motherfucker, that is for certain. It was so much - far too much, frankly - and I was overwhelmed, and I leaned on you really really hard without ever having a discussion about it. I took and took and took from you, and what I gave back wasn't much, and I know you burned out. I should have kissed you more. I should have reached for you all those times I really wanted to instead of letting you close in on yourself. I should have flung myself into your arms the second you walked into the room at the Prospector. I didn't because... I don't know why. Because I was afraid of being rejected. Because I was afraid it would feel like a bigger burden. Because the sheer magnitude of what I feel for you terrifies me, and I know it scares the shit out of you too, for different reasons.

I am so tired of living my life in fear.

I love you. The words can seem so trite, so I tried to show you every day how much you mean to me, and sometimes I wished how you showed me was clearer, but the fact is neither of us did a good enough job with saying those words. I've loved you since about three months from the day I met you. Maybe it didn't even take that long. I love you still. You are in a tiny circle, truly rarified company - the people I have chosen to be my family instead of having Fate fling them in my path (this is where I say, hi, mom! hugs to the sisters!) I want you, too. Right by my side.

Bea misses you horribly. So does Jack, although he is less forthcoming. I miss you most of all.

-s

whenever i am doubtful, this reassures me you were meant for me