I don't think I can live with you anymore

I have to come to terms with what I actually want.

I want you. I want the you that loves me and is committed to me. But I also know that throughout these nine years you have never been able to commit to me the way that I want you to. You have never been able to fence us up and protect us even in hours where everything is a mess.

Those times, those dark moments, all you do is run away until you think I have cleared up the emotional debris and can pretend nothing has happened.

I have them, these suitcases, stowed away in the attic of the house that is us. They gather little dust because from time to time, you drag them out again and disappear.

So I am told, I cannot change you. I cannot. I should stop trying and just accept that this is who you are.

If that is the case, I don't think I can live with you anymore. Not because I don't love you. But perhaps because I love myself more and want what I want first, and more than I want you.

When You Stopped Loving Me

When did you stop loving me?

I suppose I should stop asking.

It is obvious to me that you have repeatedly cheated on me emotionally. The running away to other women, single, available women who at least in your head feed a deep-buried fantasy that you are still attractive when you think I no longer love you.

The thing is, I know why you do it. You maybe do it not because you no longer love me, but because you feel you need to run away and that is your way of making your self feel stronger and more attractive and powerful.

Does it, in your head, negate me, or diffuse my power?

You Liar

I realise now how much I actually love you.

That even in the face of your betrayal a part of me, the heart of me, still wants this to work, even though every other part of me knows I should walk away. Because you have lied to me. Because you have lied to me so indecently even as I, the person you supposedly love, have been in need.

Again, you have put your blind fear first before us.

I want this cycle of fear to end for you, for us.

Yet I don't know if you can do it.

I want to say goodbye, but a part of me is still torn apart by the memory of your softness, your love, your gentility.

Yet, my head wonders how you could have really loved me when you so lied to me so blatantly. Despite my crying. Despite my clearly being at my wits' end.

I guess perhaps, this is my lesson, my path to walk. To learn how love can overcome rage. How it can make even what you have done something that I can distance myself from and not let it shake my self worth.

I see now how I can be blinded. After talking to your mother I realised, she is not my enemy. She is instead like any other mother, limited by her own flaws and unresolved issues, her baggage and her hopes for her own children. Her belief that her children are good and kind people who were raised to be considerate, to be self-sufficient in this world.

She too, like me, feels isolated from you. Cut off. Banished into the darkness.

I too, like her, cling to you in fear that you will otherwise float away or drift, unmoored.

We are alike in our love for you, I recognise that now.

She does not stand between us. You do.

I keep asking myself to be more mature, to try and see my own fault in this plot. My flaws.

But all I keep seeing is that perhaps I have been in love with the idea of you, the possibility of you that exists in parts through your gentleness that I wish would balloon out and inflate your whole.

And loving an idea is not how you build a real partnership.

Loving a real person is.

So perhaps that is where my fault lies.

The Light In My life

Increasingly, as I gravitate towards those like me, I discover that they too love someone like you.

Perhaps because we all seek a betterment of ourselves. Someone to fill the gaps and smooth over our rough edges.

You are the light in my life although you do not know it. All the pushing I do, all the relentless nudges, in my mind, I do it for you. I do it because I guess I want to make you a better you.

But the question I now ask myself is - who am I really doing it for? Me?

I want you to be free. Free of the old, heavy suitcases of emotional baggage that you have carried for so long they are now ragged at the seams from being dragged in the dust. I see them trailing their heavy paths behind you. They leave a wider welt than your own gentle footsteps do. They obliterate what you leave behind when you pass by.

And I feel an incredible sadness. A harrowing sense of pain because I think I know the joy of being free. It is stupendous and addictive. It feels like everything and nothing at the same time. Bliss is a state I am in because you are in my life.

It makes me so incredibly sad that you are not the same way too, and because I love you, I guess I desire so strongly to help you get there too.

But I also realise you have to get there in your own time.

The thing I struggle with the most is what that is. That measure of time that it will take for you to find your self and your joy. And I am terrorized by the thought that you may never get there before you depart this earth.

Because the gift you carry within, of this supreme gentleness and kindness is such a precious and rare one.

You are the light in my life because you are gentle and kind and loving and unwavering in your affection. But when I sometimes hold the mirror to your face, all you see is blackness.

I think I have now reached a point in the path to your soul where I can no longer find a way through. And I am lost, for all I long is to reach you in the center of it all.

I guess I have to learn to let you be. Except I would be sad if you misconstrued me as not caring or loving you less.

If anything, I think, in my heart, I actually love you more now. I love you enough to stop knocking at your door. I will just sit here and wait. And if I grow weary of waiting, I will carry your light in my heart and walk away, always one eye to that brambled path, in the hopes that some day I will see you emerge from it whole.

At least, I know that I do this with only the best intent. I may regret it if something untoward happens to you, but right now, at this moment, what I do is with my best intent.

So I am asking you to leave my side, so you may wander far and stray, to find your self.

If you come back to me, I will be blessed. But even if you don't, I know that I have been blessed already with nine years of your loving presence.

Your Mother

I know mothers are precious and sacred. I have one myself. I love her, but I allow myself to love her whole, with all her flaws. And I have learned over time, perhaps imperfectly, to accept what I cannot change about her.

I know I am not the model daughter, least of all in your eyes. You were brought up differently.

But I fear you will never see what your mother does to you. Not just you but all of you, your sisters, your father. Every family is imperfect, and I wish you would see that yours is no exception.

Your mother holds all of you close. So close she inserts herself into your lives. Yours and your brother's are the only ones she hasn't been able to get into because you choose to stay away. So she insidiously attempts to tell you to marry, using all sorts of excuses that disregard your happiness.

If she didn't have her own motives, she wouldn't pester you so. Because she should be able to see that you are who you are.

Or perhaps, maybe she sees the same deep unhappiness you carry buried within you. It manifests itself in the way you live your life, aimless and without purpose.

So she binds you to this earth the only way she knows how. By calling on you, needing you, clinging to your trouser leg each time she feels you are floating away.

Maybe I do the same.

We both love you, your mother and I. Maybe we both love you too much.

Love

I don't know what has come over me, but I think this time I am just tired, even of myself.

As much as I cannot let you go, as much as I love you and want you by my side for the rest of my life, I think I can no longer accept this diminishing version of you that grows dimmer by the day.

I thought I was making things up in my head. I thought that maybe, maybe there was a part of me that suddenly desired more from you. But then, packing your things and running across old cards or photographs, I see that what I want is for the person I fell in love with to be fulfilled.

You were so hopeful then. You had dreams. You had purpose and you understood that real life requires money and work and thinking of the one you love as you go through the day.

It has been so long since I have received a random card or text from you just because. You used to do all that. You used to think of me.

Now I feel I am just someone you share a space with. A convenience who makes your not living easy, who pays the bills, who gives you a nice roof over your head, a place for you to run away from your mother.

If it is to her you want to return, them I am letting you go. Because there are only two things that can happen. Either you discover you don't really love me, or you do.

And I am now willing to take that chance. Because I feel I deserve to know once and for all.

And I love you too much to carry on supporting you, being your crutch and making it easy for you to run and hide from the baggage you carry. I let you ignore it in my arms. And I think I am to blame.

I am sorry I have failed you. I am sorry I have no more strength left to carry on and find new ways to make you understand and see what a wonderful, amazing, loving person you are. Someone who deserves to believe in the everlasting love from someone else. Not someone who only deserves to be tolerated.

I love you and even if you walk away from me, from this, from us, a part of me always will.