I love him, I love him, I love him. With each passing day that he holds himself away from me, I love him and face my helplessness. It’s been over two weeks since I’ve seen him, and sometimes, he takes on an air of unreality, like I conjured him out of my loneliness. But then I think of his quirks and flaws and know that I would never have made those up, and I feel almost a gratitude for those flaws, those differences from me – they mean he is real, that he exists.
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It is breathtaking – a little more of my breath stolen every day and not given back – to see how defenseless I am to him. Whatever he does to me, whatever comes of this trying time for him and for me, I am laid open, not even an inadequate hand to flutter protectively over my bared chest. I would give him everything. Everything. I love him, I love him, I love him. I love him so helplessly it is difficult in this shadowy time to use his name – it has too much power over me. There is at present too much potential for destruction in that name. His name is locked in my heart, branded there. I have two tattoos now – his name, like his scent and his voice and his mouth, has marked me for his.
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In the blessed intervals between my crippling uncertainty, my wobbly patience is laid over thickly and securely with my glowing conviction that he is mine. He was made for me. I am for him and I claim him. In this difficult time he is going through with his family, of which I know almost nothing and of which he shares nothing with me, I cover him with my love. I speak my love over him, wrap him up with it from my side of the ocean he filled with his doubts and his weariness. I protect him with that rare thing – my love, that which I have held from every other male I have ever known or tried to know. Will he ever know the crushing value of what I offer? Will he ever truly understand, should he ever take me in his arms again, what it is that he holds? He would have laid at his feet in silk and ribbons and patience and awareness the sum total of all this woman holds within herself. Worlds within worlds within worlds. A love that would burn for him and him alone. A lively brain and instinct for miles and a quick-learning wit. For all my flaws, I can love well and I can love long. His children are in me. Does he know this? Does the idea occur to him in unexpected flashes before he pushes it away in his uncertainty?
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Can all the wanting and almost awed wondering I saw in his eyes truly dissipate so quickly, so suddenly? It is rather debilitating to have gone for thirty years never being made to feel wanted and beautiful and finely made, innocent and good to be so, and then within a few weeks have all my defenses dashed in his open admiration and tender care, only to have it all sucked away into an unknown void like a star going supernova. It leaves me shaken and waiting and so silent and always wondering. My head hurts with all the questions. And all I am left with is prayer. It is all I can do.
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I spread my love over him like Boaz’ cloak over Ruth, claiming him and standing for him in all the unknowns that lash me. Surely my love and God’s love are enough to bring him through this and back to me. Surely this is not all to be wasted. Surely I was not laid open like Christmas turkey, utterly defenseless against him, after all these years, just to pray for him for a couple of weeks. Surely God is far more efficient than having to sacrifice an already teetering, dying heart that so easily came to life, for the sake of a man who could feel honestly before leaving just as honestly. Surely, all of this, all of the startling coincidences, all the tiny pieces snapped into place, all the love I was never able to give until this big, warm, kind man unlocked it with his inimitable scent – surely all those harmonious pieces are not to go dashing about the board with no hand to draw them back together again. Surely, surely, it must mean something that I, who has never come close to loving a man before, who stayed untouched for so long I came to think I was untouchable, have chosen, or been chosen, to love this man with all the heart, all the need and passion and purity, that I’ve been harboring for so many years.
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I was made for him. The fact that he cannot warrant how wonderful I find him shows that all the other women were wrong for him – not because they were bad or more flawed than me, but simply because they could not see him. I can see him, like I have the only set of lenses that can focus on him, or I’m the only one who speaks his language. I see him as so wondrous precisely because I can see him so clearly, as he cannot yet believe. He is a marvel, wrought by God’s own hands, just for me. He is for me, and no woman will ever be able to love him as I do. I think he is exhausted by stress on all fronts and scared of the quickness and surety of my love. I think he went on Match.com with the right idea of what he wanted, but didn’t realize he wasn’t ready for what that was to be dropped so quickly and easily into his lap. I think he was not prepared to be loved so well, or so truly, or so quickly. He does not know – as well as he knows me – how sure and true a thing like that is precisely because it’s me who is giving this to him. He knows but still doesn’t accept that it has never come close to happening for me before because he is the only one with the key.
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And so I keep grasping for faith where I have none, somehow finding bits and pieces of it that weren’t there before in the waves of love that sweep over me. I love him. I love him, I love him, I love him. And someday, this torture of wanting what doesn’t want me will be over and I will be truly loved back.
