Love

It's hard not to be cynical, when you look back.

It's hard to believe that love exists.  Love between partners, that is.  Love between parent and child, between friend; that's a different thing.

Back a million years ago, on a usenet board that I used to frequent, people talked about unconditional love and debated whether such a thing existed.  Everyone was pretty firm in agreeing that there are always boundaries in love, and that there should be.  That there is some limit to love.  And I guess that I agree with that, really.  But it seems to me that my limits have always come when I've been pushed right over the edge, and that everyone else who has loved me had meant it in a much more finite way.

My first husband, who loved me, but not enough to change anything about the way that he wanted to live.  Not enough to talk to me.  Not enough to try to keep me, if it meant moving at all out of his comfort zone.

The man I loved more than anyone, who left me without explanation because... I don't know.  There is no because, since I never knew the answer.  Except that ultimately, whatever the reason, he didn't care enough to tell me the truth.  Or even to be decent enough to tell me the truth.

Michael.  Who loved me more than anyone, and who I loved with all my heart, even if not perhaps in the way he wanted.  And in all fairness, he tried.  But he never took the idea of suicide off the table, never.  And you can't live if dying is always an option, just over the next hill.  He said that he would not do this, for me.  But he did.  And tried to rip my heart out in every way that he could along the way.  I blame him least of all in a way, because so much was about illness.  I will never be able to separate the threads of illness versus... whatever the alternative is.  But still.  Never off the table.

And the man who says he loves me now.  The least of all of them.  Because those are just words that he says as part of the image that he has of me, the game that he wants to play because it suits him.  I know it's a lie, and sometimes I think that even he knows it.  And I'm willing to pretend to believe the lie, because that little bit of warmth staves off some darkness.  He will walk away, probably sooner rather than later, when it becomes inconvenient enough for him.  And I won't be sorry.

It's hard not to think that the whole idea of love isn't a pretty fantasy that we create for ourselves.  It's hard not to believe that I would be a thousand times better off if I could figure out know not to wish and long for someone.

It's very hard, on a night like this, not to be completely bitter.