(NOTE: Written about an experience in the past, does NOT reflect the present.)
(A letter I wrote to Girlfriend after I asked her to go to Seattle for two weeks so I could be alone. Until this point we essentially spent every single day, all day long, together. So cutting off contact, even for a little while, felt like a big deal.)
I love looking at your photos and vides. Memories from several years ago, before we were anything at all. And I love you. Every photo I see, I love you with massive, overwhelming, giant love. I look at younger you and love her, love everything in her. I love the old video about your former crush, your passionate expression of your feelings, just so you. Expressive, full of color, full of texture, full of angst, full of awe about this world and the beauty within it. And I love you with all that I am made of, with everything I am I love you.
And you love me. And you are thinking of me, and also thinking of her. You are missing me, and also missing her. You are texting me in the darkness at 3am, and your delayed replies tell me you are also texting her. She may very well be the last word you have before you slumber. She may very well be the first when you awake.
I am breathing, Breathing through what feels like heartbreak while in the presence of treasured love. Breathing through the narratives that tell me this is not what being loved should feel like. Breathing through the challenging idea that you could feel so much for her and still love me large, still want our life more than anything else.
I wish you only wanted me. Only loved me. I wish I was your whole world and you admired other women, enjoyed other women’s company, but love? Feelings of love? Feelings that look a lot like love? I wish they were all for me.
But they are not because they are not supposed to be, at least not in this moment. I am meant to learn to hold this with grace and beauty and thrive. I am meant to relinquish ownership and any notion that you are mine. I am meant to be someone who revels in your presence because you have chosen to build a life with me and I with you, not because I am awarded exclusivity to your feelings.
Or I am meant to be someone that fucking falls apart and produces inspired art that serves… someone.
Or I am meant to just be another human being who survives heartbreak and that is it.
Who knows, really.
And now I remember why I asked you to leave and give me space. So you know what it feels like to be separate from me. And I know what it feels like to be separate from you. So you know what it feels like to only have her. And as frightening as that is for me, because who knows what reality will surface, it is time to find out. Who are you without me? What do you want when we are an ocean apart, and my voice and face are memories, and our life is 2650 miles away? Who are you, really? What do you want, really? Who do you want, really? And these same questions for myself.
So I think we should stop texting, stop talking, stop saying goodnight, stop it all. Cut off all contact for the rest of your stay in Seattle. I know in my heart of hearts that this space is meant to produce gold, that it is the pathway forward.
This terrifies the shit out of me and makes my heart feel like its been reduced to teeny tiny pieces. But I believe in it. And I believe in us. And I believe in you. And I believe SO MUCH in me. And I think we will, in the not-too-distant future, look back on this time and laugh at what a big deal we made of it (“Remember when we were apart for 13 days and it felt like the end of the world? Hahahahaaaa, we were different people then, hahahaha.”) but I also know that we will look back and see it was completely worth it.
I love you. Though love is not a big enough word for what I feel for you. My baby, my turkey-leg king, my protector warrior, my brilliant artist, my visionary alchemist. Mine, but not mine. I love you.
