How Could I Not?

Yesterday was the 50th birthday of the man I love. He's still very far away, and the relationship we have is one that many of those who love me feel isn't good enough for me.

I deserve better.

What those in my life lose sight of is: he deserves better too.


Who do you know who has what they deserve?

Who gives what their loved ones have the right to expect of them, or gets it?

It is a constant loss to me, that my life is lived without the simplest touches, without laughing in the same room, without a partner to pump the gas and empty the litter and go out to eat with and just hear, breathing. This isn't the choice I would have made.

But to gain these things by substituting someone else - somehow, over the years (and I still look around at my options), has not been a viable choice. And that *is* the choice I definitely have made.

He has said to me:

You have a heart so strong and so fine, I am honored for you to have found me a place in it. That you want to give, and give, and give-- I'm humbled at times by your generosity. If I'm hurting you want to soothe, even if it is just to be near... your need to fix my hurts is so powerful.

The way you revel in my appearance. Call me beautiful. The way you mean it. No one has ever found me so fine.

How you have labored to be with a man so far away... putting off the idea of a more convenient partner so you can be with me.

You use your wit and your intelligence as if your appearance had no power, and the effect is devastating.

There is no generosity in me. I just don't know what else I could do, but as I have done.

To someone who has endured it, I said: to abandon someone suffering depression would be immoral.

And I've never found the man yet who could distract me from this one.


It's not what I deserve. But nothing else is, either. All I can do is hope the day will come that - even for a moment - I can give him the blessing he deserves.