Sunday, July 11, 2010

The Great Love of My Life

Seems like an almost too cheesy title doesn't it? I know, but it's all I can think of tonight.  I've written pages and pages in several journals for years. In these tear stained pages, I've mused over what my life was like and have stoked the flames of my flickering impossible dream; The dream: finding home and being whole.

In one of my journals, I wrote down all of the names of every boy/man I was ever "in love" with. I remember them all. But the last name on that list, his name, made me take pause tonight, as I lay here in a shirt he wore last weekend, wrapped in a blanket we napped in before he left...I look at his name and all I can see is that he is the great love of my life.

In my years, I can say that I've been in love. I've been blindly infatuated. I've been loyal and devoted. I've been best friend, wife, girlfriend and crush to a few men, but I've always had to give something important up in those relationships; it was never as equal and level a back and forth trade as I believe equitable relationships should be. That is normal I'm sure and even with him, there are things that we compromise on, but honestly, no one has ever filled the place at my side so completely as this man has.  He gives me back the love that I show him...I find it quite mesmorizing.

Back in July of 2006, I wrote this long letter to "the Great Love of My Life", hoping that one day I'd be able to live the happy moments that I dreamed of and wrote down that starry, starry night. I opened up the pages of the journal that holds this letter and read it again tonight. I see that he and us, the way we are, it is more than I dared to write about or hope for at the time.  I didn't dare ask for what I wanted back then, just to be safe I guess, but in these months that have passed with us, he has been exactly what my heart has longed for. 

He is not just the normal list.  He's not just a smart man, not just a good Father, not just handsome or any other thing that I thought were good things about a person.  He is those things and more.  He is my safe place, my heart walking around outside of my body haha. He is passionate, he is strong, he is so understanding, he is stunningly beautiful, he is such a man and in his own way, he honors what is good in me, he lets me be woman and child and nurtures both in me. 

But best of all, he doesn't just need me, he wants me in his life too and he keeps me.  "Be happy." he says.  That means a lot.

I'm laying here in tears, not ones of longing or hoping, no, I'm laying here in tears knowing that he is far away from me tonight, but my tears are also of a happy gratitude that "he" is real. I think this is what people feel in their relationships and marriages, the ones that work or last. It's a wonderful thing to be loved and to be loved as everything to one man. Finally :)