I don't know why I love you so much.
That was never the plan.
It isn't safe, to love someone like this
And I always knew it.
But the way your hair curls down your cheeks when you've fallen asleep and it has escaped its pinnings
The way your eyelashes leave shadows down your cheeks
The way your eyes sparkle when you laugh
You hit something so beautiful and painful in my heart.
The way you are,
Everything about the way you are
Just tears me open with love.
When you cry, I long to wrap you in my arms and protect you from every pain you inflict on yourself.
It pulls me toward you, this need to show you with my skin that I belong to you.
Resisting it carves out a huge crater in my chest
As if more and more of me goes to you by the second
But I can't follow it and make myself whole again.
If I do this, if I succeed in these next few weeks,
If you continue to love me
And relearn how to touch me
It will have been the hardest thing I ever did for someone I loved.
If I smile at you and show you how happy you make me
And manage to hide how broken I am,
If I can survive it when you turn away from me in bed,
And pull away from my touches.
I've always said that not reaching for someone I adore
Is an act of unutterable love
And it has never been more true
Because you used to reach back,
You used to crave me like I crave you
Not ***, but closeness, oneness.
I live alone.
I have always lived alone.
And not for a second have I liked it.
I can count on my hands the number of times in my life I've felt at home and whole.
This
What I am doing for you
Trying to do
By giving you all the choice in this
This is the biggest, most difficult thing I have ever given anyone.
And if at the end I lose you
Make no mistake
I will have nothing. I know it. I fear it.
When I woke up this morning the terror of it took my breath away
Because my body knows.
And it won't be losing you that does it,
It will be these weeks,
These weeks and the strength I don't have, the hang on by your fingernails strength I will have to find
In order to keep my head above water and show you why you love me.
By the end of this
I will have used every failsafe I have,
Every life support, every backup plan
I will be stripped raw and naked inside, armorless and starved,
And if you go I will be more unprepared for the agony of losing you
Than I have ever been for any sort of pain.
It is my life I'm giving you, right now,
And it's impossible for you to understand unless you've felt this looming shadow that I live with
But I'm giving you
Every bit of energy I always save to keep myself alive when I am swallowed by the dark.
And I am... so afraid. So inexpressibly, mesmerizing afraid.
I am facing my absolute worst fear every second for all this time,
And it's important that I say that.
Because I've never done it for anyone.
I've never been able to.
And maybe sometimes I'll crack, and you'll see tears, and I'll reach for you.
But I swear to god I'd be less afraid to jump after you off a bridge than to do what I'm doing now.
In ways I would rather die, because it wouldn't take so long with so much fear.
And I have to say this, I have to, because whichever way this turns out
This tops every act of love I have ever done before
And every risk I have ever taken
And every fear I have ever faced.
You are more important to me than I could ever express,
And I love you enough to give you my life,
In every horrible, beautiful sense of the word.
