Selfish

I am trying to figure this out.

Whether or not I really love you. Or I just think I do.

Maybe other people go through this too. But in the past, usually, by and large, when I am in love I am immersed in it. This time, I find myself standing at a distance, at times, as if I am an observer of it and its unfolding.

That you love me, in the ways that you do, is undoubtable. You love by caring for someone's daily needs, like you would care for a baby. Which is probably why you are drawn to them. In a very different way from Creature, who saw like-minded company. You like them because they don't have emotional demands perhaps.

But you love me wholeheartedly, because I know you do. Perhaps even more than I love you. Because for us to part now would cause devastation to you but it would not cause the same to me.

I have changed. Maybe the way I love has changed. I almost wish you knew the person I used to be, the one who loved like a young puppy - devoting, unquestioning.

Now I fear I have grown selfish. Content only to have parts of you and not all. I do not want to inherit your problems. Even though I won't, what you fail to realise is that it still takes an emotional toll on me.

Loving You

Loving you is different. Sometimes I wonder if I am more in love with the idea of you than you yourself. That is the bare, naked, raw truth.

You're not like her in the nicest of ways. Yet there was something about her that endeared her to me. She was not as great a person, not in the ways that the world may judge superficially.

You, on the other hand, are. You are sociable, a great hostess, and you have a wonderful family who are very hospitable to me. Unlike her and hers.

Yet, somehow with you, I don't feel as much. Perhaps because I don't allow myself to. Many times I have missed you when you are not around. But there is also a part of me that welcomes the absence. Because it gives me the space to do what I want, how I want to. I don't feel the need to be around you all the time.

Neither are you integral to my life, at least not yet. I don't stay up wondering what it would be like to survive you. I somehow know I can.

Maybe it's just me and where I am now in my life. After the Apocalypse of her departure, I have found myself once more. I almost believe on some days that I could actually be happy on my own. Of course life would be more complete with someone to share it with. But there are times when I could be completely happy being single, in the company of loved ones. There are moments when I feel I don't need a loved one.

I am beginning to wonder if I am fatally attracted to people who will not do well. Or are not doing well. Illness. I am attracted to illness. But Anne wasn't like that. Neither was Todd. So why you, right after her?

I feel on some days the possibility of the same old burden collapsing onto my shoulders. I refuse to let it. I will not make your problems mine. Which is why I suppose I try or at least am happy to have a certain level of disconnect from you. We don't share a life together. We share time.

There are days when I wonder whether I actually do love you.

Or whether I am just enamoured by the idea of being with someone like you.

Except the you I would like you to be is someone you are not. At least not now.

Desperate

It seems to me you are now mired in the same ditch Creature was when she left me.

In a hole too deep that the light above appears like a pinprick. Except I know with certainty that this time, with you, I was not the cause of it, nor had a hand in making you this way.

In the first place, I am rather confounded by how someone as intelligent as you has allowed herself to be in this situation. And I am also annoyed that you waste your time, filling it with things that help you escape your real life - the family, the child, me, and God knows what else. Helping other people is not going to help you.

If you were not so obligated to them, you wouldn't help.

But then again, I guess I don't know enough of your past, and perhaps never will. Just like how now I sometimes think I perhaps understand Creature better in retrospect, from a distance, through smudged lenses.

You need to focus on the problem and look at possible solutions, not barriers. If something cannot be done now, or in the timeframe that you desire or need, take a different turn. Try something else.

If you had got a job last year, you wouldn't be in this predicament.

So I don't know what is stopping you now that your situation is so darned desperate.