There are many aspects of my life and the place that I find myself in, due to last year's events, that I can logically categorize. My childhood was not my fault....my adult life...well...there is little that I am blameless for in the my evolutionary path. I have always been able to reason through situations...to analyze my accountability in my life events. Except one...I think I've trying to garner enough courage to admit that there is one thing in my adult life that I can't reason....I don't talk about it...I don't talk about him.
The things that I am most protective of...that mean the most...or that I don't have an explanation for...I don't talk about. And, he is my deepest secret...I don't know why. Of all the things about myself that I share...there are three things that I don't talk about....two of them have been shared with anyone close to me...and he is the one thing that only two people have ever heard me actually talk about...in my entire life.
When I was in my teens, people knew how I felt, but I never verbalized my feelings. As I got older, as he weaved in and out of my life....I told no one. If I was hurt, because of his choices, I never said a word...no one knew I cried over him. And, then I would tuck my feelings for him away in my closet, in a small, neat package. When he would surface again, I would unwrap the package and there would be those feelings...fresh... untouched...filled with immense hope.
As my relationships came and went...some in a storm...some only an evaporating moment...he sat in the back of my mind...in the shadows. Someone would say something and his name would reach my lips and I would quickly swallow it. I have pictures of him...they sit between the pages of a book...locked in my hope chest...literally and figuratively.
He will never be mine...and I don't know why that hurts so much...or why...after all these years...after all the times that I "thought" I had let him go...he still sits there in my mind and my heart...taking up so much space...so much of me. Even now...after we tried again...I tried again...I can't see the forest for the trees, in what feels like a miserable failure on my part...I don't know how much was me...how much was him.
I am a fool...a fool for my hope...a fool for my inability to let go...a fool for dreaming of him...a fool for being a fool....I am embarrassed for myself...that I have loved someone since I was 16 years old and I've never moved on...just gotten older. I'm 43 and, in his presence, I feel like I can breathe deeply, and I am helpless in my adoration. He touches the deepest part of me....affects me to the core of my being, and then he is gone....breaking me in a way that no else ever has done.
We are both fabulously flawed and equally amazing....together and separately. And...I am facing...now...that he will most likely never move beyond the role he's played in my life for 25 years....and, I may always love him this way...God help me...I am lost in the scent of his fear and mine....
This is my confession...by Calvin Klein
There is a line in "The Bridges of Madison County" that goes something like: The love that Robert and I shared would not last if we were together, and the love that I shared with your father would not last if we were apart." I thought of that when I read, and re-read, your post. No perspective to share, just a thought to spare. Oh, and I am honored to be one of the few with whom you have shared this story. pf
ReplyDeleteI tried watching that last night and couldn't do it...I didn't feel like crying. There are a lot of excellent lines in that movie that are about love...in general. Personally, I don't believe neither he nor I are in the right place in our lives for each other...I'm not sure it will ever happen. I do believe that both of us are so caught up in how to have a bad relationship that we don't get how to have a good one. Are we soul mates...I believe we are and I know he does too...but, that doesn't mean that we aren't vulnerable to self-sabotage....sad but true...
Deleteand...thanks for being one of those who was there to listen and be a friend to me...