Love + Reserve + Brutal Honesty
Jan. 17th, 2007 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerr• I love Him with mind and heart and something mysterious I call Spirit, mixed with more than a little ambivalence and confusion. I have a hard time believing my love is sufficient, because there is an expectation that it is a love which constantly needs to be fine-tuned, endlessly nuanced, proper in attitude. And yet I tell myself that this is ridiculous, because (I am told) that my love, just as it is, is perfectly acceptable to Him, and it is not MY efforts, but His that makes the relationship work. I am not altogether convinced, deep down, that this is true. I feel guilty for other relationships in my life that get in the way. I also feel that I do not talk to Him often enough. It is a long-standing relationship, established when I was a child. I wonder whether I hang onto it not because I believe in it, but because I simply lack the courage or imagination to live without it.
• I love him with a mixture of erotic attraction, fondness, friendship, amusement, impatience, resignation and fury. He has been knit into my life in such a way that when I look at MY life, it is always also my-life-with-him. If I had never met him, my life would have taken an entirely different path. I have traveled in certain directions because of him; I have been thwarted in traveling in other directions because of him. He introduced me to many of the most important things in my life, not the least was my circle of friends, my changing relationship with my own body, my profession, and the acquisition of other roles.
• I love her with awe, because her coming was one specific and definite time in my life when I could point and say, "There is a miracle." I love her with wonder and excitement as I watch her grow and change. I love her with the sense of being simultaneously a student and a teacher. I love her with a sense of the aging of my own body, because the ripening beauty of hers is both a brand new thing and simultaneously an echo of my own youth and beauty. I love her with the joy of sharing interests and obsessions. I love her with guilt, because I think that what I do is never enough. I love her with obsessional worry about the future: if I do _______, can she ________? Will she _________? I love her with pride. She is kind, she is steady, she is whip-crack smart, she has a great sense of humor.
• I love her with tenderness and awe and worry. She is so much like me, which both thrills me and makes me wince. I want to protect her, too much, perhaps, a tendency in myself that I am trying to root out. I love her with exasperation (she can be SO maddening). I love her with the sense of balancing precariously on a wire: I must be so careful of tone of voice, of choosing the exact right words so she will understand. I probably overthink the relationship. I love her with fierce protectiveness because she seems so fragile sometimes, and yet I keep telling myself, step back, step out of the way, she has to learn to handle this on her own. I feel as though I am responsible for giving her sailing lessons, and I know that she has to sail through stormier seas than most, so I am particularly anxious to get what I need to teach across to her. But she resists learning from me. She has so little carapace to protect her from the world.
• I love him with affection and respect and pride. I see how much difficulty he has to overcome in his own life, and I tell other people about the example he has always been to me. When we get together, he can often be somewhat distracted. That is one of the things about him that can be so endearing--he always has his fingers in a million pies; he always has to be doing something, going somewhere, writing something, thinking about something. I like his essential restlessness, because it embodies something I value: the willingness to always be stretching and growing and thinking. I admire how he made such a drastic change in careers rather late in life. A grand example for me. He has never hesitated to tell me that he loves me and is proud of me.
• I love her with a love that is grounded in practicalities. She is one of the most practical persons I have ever known, with a keen eye for bargains and sensible budgeting, but at the same time she has an artistic river that has run through her soul like a torrent for most of her life, expressing itself through music. I love that combination: oh yes, the practical with the artistic, see? They can be combined. Our love is grounded in memories and food and conversations and listening. Yeah, and occasional fights when I was younger. She is an extraordinarily good listener, and certainly bends over backwards not to impose her will on me. A trait worthy of note. There are aspects about me that puzzle her, I know, but I still know that she loves me unconditionally.
• I love her as an example, a guide, a cheerleader. She has been my trailblazer in so many aspect of my life, particularly parenting. We have coped with some of the same things: parenting struggles, seasonal depression, questions of faith, and I always have watched how she does things, and I value her advice. She has also helped me out of some damned awkward scrapes when I was younger. She is generous, a natural hostess, a mother, a nurturer, and I have gladly accepted her nurturing many times, wishing I could do more to give her what she has given me.
• I love him . . . well, I do. But we live in different cities now, and we don't talk too often. Yet, that past history is always there, and on the rare times we get back together, the years fall away as we start laughing again. I've always envied his wit, his humor. He is so smart, and he works so hard. He is kind and generous when I need it.
• I love her with admiration, which in the past has sometimes been mixed with conflict and (dare I say it?) even a little envy. My god, she is gorgeous, and she has always drawn attention for it. She dresses to the nines. She knows how to decorate. She has an artistic flair for setting a table. And lord, she is funny! There are things she has said, cracks that she has made that we still laugh about years afterwards.
• I love her with deep and abiding love, in a relationship that has developed extraordinary complexity in extremely meandering paths through the years. Think of an aged rare wine, sharp in the beginning, almost discarded once, but now mellowed with the years, but with all kinds of subtle flavors interacting. Of all my relationships, perhaps it has been the most changeable, but our tie to each other, which once almost broke entirely, is now one of the absolute bedrocks of my life. I love her changing moods, her adventurousness. Another way to think of it: a garden with two gardeners. She tends to rearrange the beds constantly, frequently ripping out perennials that I thought looked okay, but I've learned to accept this, even enjoy the ever changing landscape. I bring the manure and rake and weed, and she plants the gorgeous birds of paradise that I would never have dared to try. Now the garden is a rare thing of beauty that draws admiration from many, one of the greatest joys of my life. And I spend time there every Sunday, time that I treasure.
• I love him with the tenderness of lavender folded into tissue paper, wrapped around a dream put away for good. I realize that I do not know him at all now, when once he meant everything to me and I thought we understood each other soul to soul. But that is all in the past now. I will always be grateful to him for awakening my heart the way that he did, even though there were times I cursed the day I ever met him, since it hurt me so much. All that has eased with the passage of time, although I suppose it will never disappear entirely. That is understandable, and I don't regret it. I truly wish him nothing but the best.
• I love him distantly, regretfully, with more than a pang of guilt, because I know I never loved him the way he loved me. I am particularly glad--even relieved--that he has a child of his own now. He wanted one so much, and it is good that denying him myself did not deny him that in the end. I am glad that he has the kind of life and love he deserved, even though I could not give him that myself.
• I love him with a mixture of erotic attraction, fondness, friendship, amusement, impatience, resignation and fury. He has been knit into my life in such a way that when I look at MY life, it is always also my-life-with-him. If I had never met him, my life would have taken an entirely different path. I have traveled in certain directions because of him; I have been thwarted in traveling in other directions because of him. He introduced me to many of the most important things in my life, not the least was my circle of friends, my changing relationship with my own body, my profession, and the acquisition of other roles.
• I love her with awe, because her coming was one specific and definite time in my life when I could point and say, "There is a miracle." I love her with wonder and excitement as I watch her grow and change. I love her with the sense of being simultaneously a student and a teacher. I love her with a sense of the aging of my own body, because the ripening beauty of hers is both a brand new thing and simultaneously an echo of my own youth and beauty. I love her with the joy of sharing interests and obsessions. I love her with guilt, because I think that what I do is never enough. I love her with obsessional worry about the future: if I do _______, can she ________? Will she _________? I love her with pride. She is kind, she is steady, she is whip-crack smart, she has a great sense of humor.
• I love her with tenderness and awe and worry. She is so much like me, which both thrills me and makes me wince. I want to protect her, too much, perhaps, a tendency in myself that I am trying to root out. I love her with exasperation (she can be SO maddening). I love her with the sense of balancing precariously on a wire: I must be so careful of tone of voice, of choosing the exact right words so she will understand. I probably overthink the relationship. I love her with fierce protectiveness because she seems so fragile sometimes, and yet I keep telling myself, step back, step out of the way, she has to learn to handle this on her own. I feel as though I am responsible for giving her sailing lessons, and I know that she has to sail through stormier seas than most, so I am particularly anxious to get what I need to teach across to her. But she resists learning from me. She has so little carapace to protect her from the world.
• I love him with affection and respect and pride. I see how much difficulty he has to overcome in his own life, and I tell other people about the example he has always been to me. When we get together, he can often be somewhat distracted. That is one of the things about him that can be so endearing--he always has his fingers in a million pies; he always has to be doing something, going somewhere, writing something, thinking about something. I like his essential restlessness, because it embodies something I value: the willingness to always be stretching and growing and thinking. I admire how he made such a drastic change in careers rather late in life. A grand example for me. He has never hesitated to tell me that he loves me and is proud of me.
• I love her with a love that is grounded in practicalities. She is one of the most practical persons I have ever known, with a keen eye for bargains and sensible budgeting, but at the same time she has an artistic river that has run through her soul like a torrent for most of her life, expressing itself through music. I love that combination: oh yes, the practical with the artistic, see? They can be combined. Our love is grounded in memories and food and conversations and listening. Yeah, and occasional fights when I was younger. She is an extraordinarily good listener, and certainly bends over backwards not to impose her will on me. A trait worthy of note. There are aspects about me that puzzle her, I know, but I still know that she loves me unconditionally.
• I love her as an example, a guide, a cheerleader. She has been my trailblazer in so many aspect of my life, particularly parenting. We have coped with some of the same things: parenting struggles, seasonal depression, questions of faith, and I always have watched how she does things, and I value her advice. She has also helped me out of some damned awkward scrapes when I was younger. She is generous, a natural hostess, a mother, a nurturer, and I have gladly accepted her nurturing many times, wishing I could do more to give her what she has given me.
• I love him . . . well, I do. But we live in different cities now, and we don't talk too often. Yet, that past history is always there, and on the rare times we get back together, the years fall away as we start laughing again. I've always envied his wit, his humor. He is so smart, and he works so hard. He is kind and generous when I need it.
• I love her with admiration, which in the past has sometimes been mixed with conflict and (dare I say it?) even a little envy. My god, she is gorgeous, and she has always drawn attention for it. She dresses to the nines. She knows how to decorate. She has an artistic flair for setting a table. And lord, she is funny! There are things she has said, cracks that she has made that we still laugh about years afterwards.
• I love her with deep and abiding love, in a relationship that has developed extraordinary complexity in extremely meandering paths through the years. Think of an aged rare wine, sharp in the beginning, almost discarded once, but now mellowed with the years, but with all kinds of subtle flavors interacting. Of all my relationships, perhaps it has been the most changeable, but our tie to each other, which once almost broke entirely, is now one of the absolute bedrocks of my life. I love her changing moods, her adventurousness. Another way to think of it: a garden with two gardeners. She tends to rearrange the beds constantly, frequently ripping out perennials that I thought looked okay, but I've learned to accept this, even enjoy the ever changing landscape. I bring the manure and rake and weed, and she plants the gorgeous birds of paradise that I would never have dared to try. Now the garden is a rare thing of beauty that draws admiration from many, one of the greatest joys of my life. And I spend time there every Sunday, time that I treasure.
• I love him with the tenderness of lavender folded into tissue paper, wrapped around a dream put away for good. I realize that I do not know him at all now, when once he meant everything to me and I thought we understood each other soul to soul. But that is all in the past now. I will always be grateful to him for awakening my heart the way that he did, even though there were times I cursed the day I ever met him, since it hurt me so much. All that has eased with the passage of time, although I suppose it will never disappear entirely. That is understandable, and I don't regret it. I truly wish him nothing but the best.
• I love him distantly, regretfully, with more than a pang of guilt, because I know I never loved him the way he loved me. I am particularly glad--even relieved--that he has a child of his own now. He wanted one so much, and it is good that denying him myself did not deny him that in the end. I am glad that he has the kind of life and love he deserved, even though I could not give him that myself.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 04:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 04:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 05:11 am (UTC)K.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 12:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 05:29 am (UTC)The rest is lovely.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 07:23 am (UTC)How do I love thee? Let me count the ways
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise;
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's fiath.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost siants - I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! - and if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Slightly morbid I know, but for some reason what you wrote made me think of it.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 12:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 01:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 03:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-18 04:30 pm (UTC)