ow

I know what love is. Without a damn doubt.  
 
I know how to love. I have had the best teachers. I was born face up to a sky of love, cradled by waves of it. Birth mother, her husband, her family. Birth father, now prodigal, who understands it the way I do. My parents. A few amazing teachers and mentors I was lucky enough to be guided by (Mr. Miller, Ms. Benoit, camp counselors and Beth). Everyone in my life welcomed me, and even if they didn’t understand me fully or did not wish to, the love was there, a complete, blanketing thing. Love has been all over my life. Caring. I understand it. I was steeped in it, which allowed me to learn to love myself as fully as the people in my life have loved me. Understanding love is how I make sense of the world. Understanding that it leads all things, I mean all things, keeps me from losing all motivation. It founds my joy, because for every thing that exists, you can trace back a loving cause. It keeps me amazed.
 
I know about love.
And I do love you.  
 
I just want to be sure that you understand how much I love you,
How it’s in my guts that you are home.
It is my guts.
 
Because my struggle for much of the past year in accepting myself, my desires, and being brave enough to follow them and just! Letting go! - a good bit of that is deeply rooted in feeling ashamed about the extent, the persistence, and the raw power of my love for you. Or rather, loving you has taught me much about that struggle.
 
A piece of that struggle has been the ache of things.
 
How you can’t be my home right now.  
And that you may never be home anywhere except in my heart,
And that I still love you with my entire mind, heart, and being,
And I understand you owe me nothing for how damn much I love you,
Though I may crave to be your home, too, and crave more of you.
Even if I got to wake up beside you for the rest of my life, or at least the rest of yours,  
I think I would never lose that craving for more parts of you,  
More of an understanding. You are beautiful in flesh and spirit. You fascinate me.  
 
This is real. I am so fucking lucky to have found a thing like this.
Anyway.
 
My heart is not broken that you’re living with Squid,
Though I cannot deny that that hurts.
Amid the solace I find in the fact that you are not alone or lonely and that you have someone to worry for you,
And that you take joy in that relationship.
My heart knows all of this and does rejoice in those things.
Still it hurts.
Physically. Somatically.  
It is growing from learning to contain all of this ache. In capacity, and power, and understanding.
Luckily it was strong enough, and the right shape, not to break here.  
 
That I can’t be with you. It feels like magic to be with you. I want the moments between our visits
 
I hate that you said that thing about me outgrowing you. Do you really think I’ll outgrow you one day? Or do you fear that I would leave you behind?  Because you do not need to waste your worry on the latter. I know what love is and I know what love is enduring. This one is.  
Because you are the foundation for me of growing at all.  
You make me want to adventure, to find new pleasures and heights and to express myself unapologetically.
You first showed me the glory, the fullness, and the beauty of unapologetic existence.
You make me brave enough to face my fears, and do the growing.  
You started me, set me on fire for who I’m becoming now. Maybe someone or something else could have taught me the same thing, but not the way meeting and falling for you did. It damn near broke my heart that you said that.
 
I want to say all this, but I really don’t want to worry you with the gravity of my feelings. I think you understand. I think you know that you have my whole heart on your side - at this point, no matter what, it’s stuck there - and it wants nothing back from you but a kiss now and then.
 
Well, it does want much more than that, desperately so.
 
But absolutely, and forever, in whatever capacity you wish to keep it, you have my heart until you tell it to go away.
 
That’s for sure.