How Is That Possible? - 5-8-10

On my way to D.C. to join my parents for a three-day weekend, something struck me that I think had not struck me in such brilliant clarity before. I was thinking about B____’s ex-fiancée and I realized as I hadn’t before that she had him and let him go. And I was boggled, momentarily blinded to the highway signs flitting past. She had met him, liked him, then loved him; she had become integrated with his family, slept with him, lived with him, and was asked to marry him. She was building a life with this glorious, flawed human being and just couldn’t make it work, couldn’t want it as much as I’m sure she wanted to want it.

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I never got the impression she was a bitch. Rather, they just came to the realization with reluctant inevitability that they just weren’t right for each other.

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And I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. She let him go? She had him square in her embrace and – what? – let him slip? Now, I am not exonerating B____ from responsibility in this. He has deep wounds that would have reared their ugly heads and interfered with any relationship he tried to have until he got them healed. And in the end, he wasn’t exactly clinging to her. But I can’t help but wonder – did she never look at him and see him with unscaled eyes, see his worth shining right out of his skin? Did it never occur to her to hold on and not let go, to see his flaws come out for the hundredth time, the thousandth time, and choose – make the choice, not float on the feeling – to focus her narrowed sights instead on his marvelous wealth of good qualities? Did she never think how worthy it would have been to believe instead in his potential, to view with level-headed simplicity all he could be, even if he wasn’t showing it right at that moment? How far could her stubbornness or vision have reached to have had him square in her life and let the tide ebb and slowly wash him out to sea?

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I cannot wrap my brain around it. He is a dazzling display of the best qualities that were instantly obvious to me from our first meeting, before I had ever fallen in love with him. And to have had such a man as is not found in this world look at you and say he wants to spend the whole of his life with you alone, only to come to the unimaginable conclusion that it’s not enough for you . . . it defies my comprehension.

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She had him. She was loved by him. And she let him go. Not as I did, because he left, but because she didn’t want him anymore. I am at a loss for words.

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But I suppose this is what I meant all those months ago when I was first facing the prospect of life without him and recognizing my own incurable helplessness before my love for him: the fact that he cannot warrant the worth I saw in him, his very words echoing his self-blindness – “No one has ever looked at me the way you look at me.” – simply proves, quietly and without fanfare, that I was the only one made for him. I was the only one given B____-sight which can see with unflinching clarity his shortcomings and still see the stronger light of his incomparable worth.

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I can’t hold it against her, his ex-fiancée, for not seeing his great value, for not seeing what a gem she had in a sea of cut glass.

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She couldn’t.

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She wasn’t me.

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The Truth - 5-4-10

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I love him.
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It's Going To Be A While - 5-2-10

You know, I may have doubted that that longed-for question, “If B____ is really what you want, are you willing to wait as long as it takes for him?” was from God, but I always knew that if it was from him, he would not have asked a question like that unless he meant to put it to the test, unless “as long as it takes” would surpass my own feelings and take me into the depth of the realm of doubt. Unless it was going to truly test me. I knew that if he asked me that question, what he was really saying was, “Get ready. It’s going to be a while.”

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And I said at the time, without a shadow of a doubt, that, yes, absolutely, positively, no going back, yes, I am willing to wait. And through all the trials that have crashed down on me since that night, I hold to that. I don’t want anyone else not because I’m afraid of dating or am just holding on out of habit, but because I know B____’s worth. I know how he fits me. I know there is none like him. I know no other woman could ever love him as I do. Not because another would be less capable of loving him as much if she truly saw and understood him – he is just too lovable and charmingly self-deprecating not to be loved massively. Rather, it would be because no other woman can see him like I can. No one else has the lenses required to understand him. And I must fight for him, even when he grows cold and stiff beneath my fingers, because he must not be left unprotected. He must not be left to eke out a life where he shies away from the risk necessary to grasp all he dreams of and deserves. If I don’t cover him and lift him up, no one would. It’s a shocking thing, really, that such a man is allowed to drift in the company of so many and not be seen for all he is. He said it himself that fateful night when I told him I loved him – “No one has ever looked at me the way you do. To everyone else, I’m just an ordinary guy.” Shocking. They just don’t see. But I do.

Am I Beautiful At All? - 5-2-10

I asked my father today, knowing what I was doing and feeling no compunction, if he thought I was beautiful. Knowing how often he complimented me on a very regular basis, he scoffed tolerantly and said, “You know the answer to that question. You’re just fishing for compliments.” I said, “Yes, I am, because I need to hear it.” I could hear the smile in his voice as he said of course I was beautiful. I asked him what was beautiful about me and he rattled off with alacrity my skin, my hair, my eyes, my figure, my hands, my feet, my smile, my teeth. I was starting to glow when what I risked happened, as I knew it would. He paused in his list and in a sterner voice added, “You should be out finding a man who can appreciate all the beautiful things about you. What are you expecting to happen? How is this going to end?” I shrugged him off as I must and we fell back to TV watching. How could I tell him I’m a bit tied up? That I don’t want anyone else because there is no one else like B____? That I’m not a fool but I have to wear the scarlet letter of it anyway?

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I let it go. What else could I do? The fact of the matter is that if you’re not actively searching for a man, you are not allowed to participate in the grown-ups’ conversations about relationships, weddings, and raising children. Your opinions don’t belong. When I was dating B____, I experienced what it was like to have the flood-gates open and having admittance to the world everyone else inhabited, the world of connections, the world I had always pressed my nose against the glass to see. My right to talk about my dreams and plans for a wedding and marriage and babies was no longer amputated by the inevitable censure, “Why don’t you get a date first?” That had been the response I received when I wanted to eagerly share opinions I had, no exceptions. That was one extremely lovely, rather unexpected perk of my relationship with B____ – I was a first-class citizen now.

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How could I tell my father I am working, I am searching, I’m not giving up? How could he understand that right now I don’t have anybody but my father to tell me I’m beautiful and have it mean something?

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When you’re alone, you lose those rights in that world of connections. You have only one right – the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and probably will be used against you in a court of community.

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So for now I’ll just have to trust God finds me beautiful and try to see it for myself and make that be enough and just not ask anymore.

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But I do have a beauty to unveil and I am not to be wasted. I am meant to be seen.