2018.07.27 Rambling To S
I can't thank you enough for telling me about your memory of the first time you told me that you loved me. I can't remember it exactly, but I imagine that it affected me deeply. The truth is that I felt your love for me, made manifest by your actions. I also can't remember a time since I met you that I wasn't in love with you. Thinking about how complete it made me has carried me a long, long way. It has made me a better person. It has made me a good father.
I held on too long to hope that you would stay with me, in the way that lets me feel complete. You are right: what you say you need, to be separate from me, is not something I can bear with easy equanimity. It is very sad that my newfound incompleteness impairs our friendship and partnership, but I will do the best I can to minimize those impairments on my side.
It will take a while to come to terms with what there is left of me, and heal over the feeling of incompleteness. I want to keep wearing the ring for now because it symbolizes all the things I have grown into - the better person, the good father. I need that sigil for a while, to remind myself that I can be a full partner and a loving friend with joy, honour, and wisdom.
Well, the joy part is struggling a bit, for now. But the honour and wisdom aren't going anywhere.
I can't feel your love for me any more. It's been hard to sense for a while, but being loved wasn't my job. My job was to love you, and I focussed on that. I clung to the sense that while we were each other's, me yours and you mine, that living intertwined lives would reveal our fundamental love for each other. That it would be enough, and maybe flower again and again, on and on, until we had lived oh-so-very complete lives. Perhaps I was foolish, not understanding how grave your woes have been.
It was the very best 15.74 years I have ever had, and I will cherish them always. It is not wise for me to be as vulnerable with you any more, but I will always love you and want to always be your friend.
Love,
-Clayton