Love

It amazes me sometimes, when I realise how much capacity and skill we have for loving. Different ways for different objects. People. Our pets. Places. Things.

Even lovers. We love each of them differently. No two are the same. Some we love with rage and fury. Some with tenderness. Some quietly. Some with loud cymbals and drums. Some slowly, over years. Some quickly. But almost always, in the most unlikely ways.

Someone said that what counts with love is how it actually ends. Death aside as the inevitable eventuality of even the greatest of loves, I suppose it is actually true.

With Big T, it ended when it did. The universe and life just made it easier in some ways. The presence of Marli however ensured he and I will always be attached by an invisible string that will bind us in the most tenuous yet definitive way. But it was over at the right time, when he and I were both ready to move on to our adult lives, mine here and his over there. He was my buoy while afloat in a foreign sea. I wrapped myself around him because I didn't want to be alone.

With Babbitt, it never ended. It just changed into something more affectionate, although with the same ferocity, steadfastness and loyalty. And undoubting assumption that we would always love each other through space and time. But with her, there was never any doubt that things had run its natural course. There was nothing more that sort of love could have given either her or me. We had to both move on.

With Rockette, I thought for the longest time it was a quiet love. When in truth, it was our life that grew quiet and closed. Insular and defensive. Us against the world. We were like two people under siege. And when the dam broke, everything good and pure flowed out with it, leaving behind only the sediments of things that had long eroded beneath the love.

And now Tigger. I love her with a quiet gentleness that is I believe a lesson from Rockette, yet she brings out the child in me that Babbitt does, the dreamer, the red balloon, and I cling to her like a float, except with less desparation. She is like a buoy in an ocean that I am familiar with, instead of something alien. I don't need her by my side all the time.

But she seems to yearn for me. I wonder sometimes if this part of her will only last as long as her current situation. And whether when she gets back on her feet she will yearn for me the same.

Perhaps she will, but more subtly, with less outward display of need.

I wonder about that sometimes. I wonder if I will like it. Already I sometimes find myself missing parts of her that were so present on the surface in the early weeks and have now slowly dissipated or occur fewer and farther occasions between.

I imagine that when she is back on her feet, she will feel more in control. She may want to protect me more. Or perhaps appreciate the independence in me.

It may actually work. There is something in me that tells me she and I would actually make a strong team in more than one way. Emotionally, intellectually, and in our souls. She is the finger around which the string to my red balloon is tethered.

I like that. I like that a lot.