and I need your love the most when I least deserve it

So many in my life promise impossibility. They know it, I know it, but I accept it every time. And it slices deeper every time it happens--"I hope I never let you down" from one; "I will always love you" from another; "I will never leave you" from a third. On and on it goes, ringing through changes and variations, where the core of the offering is always We cannot be parted.

And it's not just rejection and revolution, anger and deceit, regrets and lost causes; sometimes, the shock is in the severance. One day there, in my heart or in my arms; the next day gone by flood or lost to ammunition, keen and cutting, or overwhelmed by their own personal losses as they watch their life spiral crimson over bone.

And I admit, I have been waiting, breath perhaps only in secret held, for the words to be said: "You are my only love" or "I will always be there" or any similar variation.

Tonight, the analyzing machine that comprises part of me turned in the initial report of many months of observation: that none of my current loves have ever said this. That most of them, when asked, admit the possibility of leavetaking. That there is acknowledgment that things happen, in a life, that circumstances change, that we could drift in differing directions...in short, that life may happen in our lives, and even parting must be provided for in its own time.

The closest any have ever come to ringing through those particular changes? "I don't intend ever to give you up, if I can help it." Which admits to strong intention, but also subtly acknowledges (at least, to my thinking) that intention may not match action.

There is a curious purity, a moment of crystalline comprehension, when the wall of the glass heart is tapped just enough to shimmer the air with that piercing, ringing tone of understanding. I can accept this, I think to myself, deep in the shrouded shadowed places where I think. I can believe this. This much is true.

There may well be partings to come, of one or two or all, but that will be dealt with in time. The small somber sliver of spirit, soberly standing guard (hah) can relax, at last, and accept this with such grace as we know how to express. This, also is new ground; new and uneasy territory for me, for I am profoundly unused to standing and unsuspecting in any way.

But I will learn. This, also, I will learn: how to simply love, and know that love returned, and not fear dissolution.

A toast, then, to personal growth. And perhaps, just perhaps, a wee dram of the good stuph kept reserved for growing up. It has taken me far beyond far too long for this.