Temporary? Insanity

…I’d still choose you.

Sometimes, I get caught up in whimsy, swept away by the tantalizing lure of the What If? I can see the parting of the ways. The simple choice that would have shifted me just the slightest bit this way or that. We might never have met. I might have chosen this or that fellow. The one who broke my heart might have chosen me if I’d only…

Only…I can’t want it. I can’t want for any of that to have happened. No matter how tantalizing the experience of wondering is. I close my eyes and watch as possible scenarios play out on the movie screen of my mind. Briefly, I am entertained. But you are no longer one of the stars of my life and I feel directionless. Frightened. My eyes open and I blink rapidly a few times. Yes, reality is still as it was. You are still here.

We are still we.

You taught me once about the power of love. That loving someone is like telling them you are made of glass and then handing them a hammer. Inadvertently we crack each other. Sometimes with words. Sometimes with a look. I hate seeing the disappointment in your eyes and knowing I’ve cracked you again. I feel it should be audible. A sharp syllable punctuating the stillness with its pain.

I wish to find not only the right words, but the right time and the right tone of voice. The words that can teach you what I have discovered in the depths of myself.

That knowing, even as I know now, all the pain and confusion the many years have carried us through. The struggles to understand each other. To not hurt each other. To support and encourage and lift each other. I would choose you. Again and again and again I would choose you. Take again every path. Every subtle turning that led us to meet.

I would choose you for the joyfulness of your heart. The way your eyes crinkle when you smile. The silliness you oh so easily embrace. Your childlike joy in simple things. Your giving heart. Your hardworking nature. And all that you have taught me of hope and love and happiness.

We are no easy match, you and I. Two seperate halves of the same whole, perhaps, but our edges are jagged and sharp and some days I wonder will we ever properly join them together. You are what I am not, and foolishly I have allowed that to cause me pain. Regret. Wondering. Would it have been easier with someone more like myself?

The answer is yes. Yes of course it would have.

And yet I chose you. Choose you again this very moment. And I am filled to brimming. Were anyone to ask the why of it all, that could be my only answer to them. So very different, you and I, and yet you bring me such joy.

I feel I will spend the rest of this life and eternity attempting to repay that debt.

Happy Anniversary Sweetheart.