The X Factor

A bit more than two years ago, X, with whom I'd been anticipating his homecoming for about half the year, changed his mind about coming home. The situation was dramatic, but at the end of the day it stemmed not from "us" but from his fear that if he left he might, for an indeterminate period of time, be unable to be the father he prefers to be, needs to be. The way things happened alienated those around me who saw how upsetting this was for me, but has done nothing to affect what lies between X and me. Still, I have lost the support of some who love me, for my "blindness" where he is concerned. We've been separated six and a half years; they feel (as, by the way, does X himself) that I deserve "better".

The means by which this term "better" is defined, I've discussed more than with anyone else, with X himself. I deny that someone physically present poses an improvement over him. He respects my autonomy enough not to question that. It's a recognition of my intelligence and personal freedom I give a lot of value, because it happens to value the reality of me over the idea of this theoretical improvement on my life. Just as I don't deny my age - I earned every second of it - I am unashamed, and worked to become, who and what I am. And X is a big part of that, in these years since my dad died.

Focusing on him hasn't come without consideration and review (##note to self, actually - make sure to post about The Madonna Principle##). Many times in the years since X has been geographically unavailable, I have actively sought to find someone closer to home. I have never fully closed myself off to other attention. Even in this calendar year, I've taken a look at what is out there. It's a policy to be sure I'm NOT cheating myself; it's X's own policy that he has no firm right to claim me; it's the boredom and curiosity of "well, what IF" ... and it's usually a function of confirming nobody holds a candle to him, as either my friend, or as the man I am interested in.

Never yet have I found anyone who swayed me.

After the situation two years ago, X and I chose to have a summit meeting. I felt no comfort discussing it with those who were so protective of me, so I kept it a secret then, though nobody's asked about my odd little trip since I took it.

I left the hometown - it wouldn't have been easy to conceal his presence here anyway - and he went to a neutral location, and we met, and we dealt with some things. We came away knowing little more than that he and I love one another, and his children are still many thousands of miles from where I live and he wishes he could, and they are still too young for him to desert them.

It had been two years, then, since we'd seen each other physically.

This summer, when we meet again, it'll be about two years once again.

And so ... I am planning a summer vacation in hopes of splitting it between two trips; a good visit with my family. And a few days with him.


***


X is, for good and ill (though the ill seems broader to others than it does to me, I acknowledge our road has not been easy), the one person who knows most completely. He knows me more even than my oldest friends. And loves me even with all that. He's the challenge I need, and the joy I revel in. We miss each other acutely; yet the inability to change that doesn't matter. In any case, it's not as if there is some other option. And any man who'd put me above his kids, I could never want.

He'll be a father forever - but they won't be small forever, and X and I have come through over eight years already, still "us" and undiminished. Whatever else has changed, however difficult it has been, or how bad it looked to anybody else, what lies between us seems to be indelible. Indestructible. I've checked on this and it seems confirmed.





I think of seeing him - and how it was that last time, when it was still painful - and I realize ... this time, it will be more joyful.

Two years, at my age, is a period of time which seems to goes by in a hurry. Who knows what could happen in the next two, or the next. All I know is, for the last two (for all of the last eight), my heart still blooms when I think of X. Blooms. Opens, and is only the larger for it.

Hard as it seems to those who love me - how much harder, I think, to have never had this friend, this man, this challenge, this heart I admire, and the one he's helped build in me. How much worse to have had "easy" and become anything but the woman I am because I've known him. How much worse to have had no love at all.

I flutter a little.

I might see him some time ... fairly soon ...