Every so often, as happens to all of us, I get really down.
And before you step in, let me assure you I know this will pass. I"m not looking for sympathy, I'm not looking for advice. I'm just needing to talk this out. Sort of like an AA member participating in self-confession and self-psychotherapy.
My girlfriend is driving me nuts. It's been an emotionally tumultuous few months for me. I've plunged to the nadir with her, and come back. Nothing causes me elation like her telling me she needs me, and loves me, and doesn't want to lose me.
And at the same moment, it fills me with a feeling of foreboding as though this is just the confirmation that I'm being lied to.
I've been patient with her for some time. I've brought her along in the relationship to a point where she seems very open with me. She's told me things about her childhood experiences that you don't tell casually to people you aren't intimately involved with. And that keeps me in this relationship, showing her that she can trust me, implicitly. Showing that she can count on me, implicitly. Showing that I love her, totally.
But logic and emotion are not the same. And the long wait for her to come to me is telling on me. I keep asking myself, is this worth it? Am I making an investment in this relationship that will never come to fruition?
I have ended relationships over much smaller problems, and never felt so conflicted. Why do I stay in this one?
I can, at any point, feel that I should just walk away, and simultaneously feel that I should just grab her by the shoulders, pull her to me to kiss and hug because I don't want her to leave.
I know I make no sense. Being in love doesn't necessarily make sense.
In the end it is still me who had to count the cost and decide if the tally is too much.
Nothing is easy to decide when it involves you and another. Even our discussion end in a combination of bitter and sweet. Her crying in my arms, me doing the same. She being upset by my needs, me being upset by hers. The yearning we both show to each other.
Some of the best feelings I've experienced with her was when I bought her clothes for her birthday, and the pleasure I got out of her delight. Oh if the rest of this were as simple as that.
I feel the need to protect her, to save her, to love her, to ravish her. I want her to lay within my arms, taking in the aroma of her, bury my head in her neck, feel her hair tickle my face, and wake that way in the morning. I want that warm glow of contentment and satisfaction as we law with our limbs entwined, holding the cold out with our embrace.
IF poetry could bring her to me, I would have reams of it by now.
I fear that the real answer is more tears, more anguish, more work. The future holds no certainty past the coming dawn, so I must accept that and strive for what I want.
My dad always says there is no end to life until you stop drawing breath, no end to your dreams until you stop dreaming. I certainly cannot stop dreaming, not so long as I draw breath.