More love (written by my love)

One year ago this week.

Bev and I moved in together.

 We’ve lived together for a year now.

It’s been a full and busy year. Because in that year we’ve both worked our way through new jobs. We’ve begun a life together. We’ve started a home. Bit by bit rebuilding lives we had apart, but this time together. It was one of those really fortunate things you don’t see as fortunate at the time. But aside from some crappy furniture I had from when I lived alone and Ruby’s stuff (which was always in better shape than mine) we had nothing. We have built things up. And what we have is genuinely ours. It’s really a shared life.

We both were making our way back from some of life’s toughest challenges. Hers was the illness and death of her father. She moved east to be close and spend his final days with him. Me I was tending to a collapsed relationship with my daughter’s mother. My little girl was very tiny when I left, barely a year old. And I was coming back from my father’s suicide. Ruby was just 11 weeks old then and it just sped along an end her mother and I knew would come. Because we just were not right for one another.

But after that and some dating with some nice enough women. And a sincere effort to connect, I found that there was no spark. No fire. No real interest.

Then I met Bev and we lit like a wildfire. And like a wildfire we have had our rough spots while we were dating and since we moved in. But we still got heat. It’s strange but we actually broke up a couple years ago for a while and both dated other people. And both found it to not feel right. Our hearts were tied together. We were still drawn to each other, even miles apart.

We came back together and in a crazy and busy time we just dove in and ahead last year. To the outsider it would have maybe appeared crazy and make no sense and probably not well thought out. But aren’t all great relationships seen that way? Unless you are in it you just don’t get it.

And here we are, we’ve worked our way through. I cannot imagine any other person being in my life but her. This is my family. It’s all I need. I love her and I lust for her. She makes me feel loved, safe and calm. When the hours are long at work or when people wear me down, when I just feel like I got nothing more to give. When my daughter’s mother makes me want to break stuff and when my boss makes me feel about 2 inches tall. It’s coming home to her I think of. It’s in her that I find new strength and time to heal. When I need it’s her that I need.

That’s new. That’s something I never understood or saw in other relationships. I have been used to and been accustom to and I have built a habit. But I’ve never needed. It’s as real as an addiction. When we apart too long I feel it. Except this is a healthy need. Because she refuses to allow me to be crippled by it. Or rely on her. She supports me and pushes me forward, she will not leave me to do it alone. But she will not do it for me. And that’s the greatest gift anyone can give us, the right to fight. The right to do for ourselves. When she gives me the room to fail she gives me the room to succeed.

And now there is us.

The smell of her, the sound of her, her breathing and her voice. The taste of her and the feel of her. The acceptance and the affection. The intense love making. When I close my eyes it is her I see. She is my perfect woman. My perfect thing. She makes me smile and she makes me shake my head. We laugh a lot. We have inside jokes and we laugh at the world. Hell we laugh at you. Don’t worry it’s not malicious. It’s just that we share in a sort of amused view. You guys are a part of us. Not a bad thing at all.

41 years and for the first time in my life, I am truly happy. It’s not the happy I thought people had when they got here. I always pictured some Hollywood version or some song sung in the breathy tones of affection. But a movie is 2 hours and a song is 4 minutes. This is real, it’s life and it’s forever. It is a happiness that is not euphoric. But really I don’t want euphoria. That’s not a realistic way to live. I tried, 20 or more years of addiction was about chasing the euphoria of that first opiate rush. There’s always a price to pay for that. This happiness is a low and warm fire. It is reliable and sustainable. It doesn’t make promises it cannot keep. And it is not scary. It’s not happiness with a warning sticker. One that warns you that it can be swept out from under your feet. It’s real. It’s ours.

I know her. She knows me. And the woman I know is better than anyone. I’d stand beside her in anything and fight for any reason she gave me. Because she would never abuse that faith or trust. She would never ask of me anything but what is important and what is real.

Here’s the truth, if I could just be her friend and know her like that, I’d feel honored. That I get to call her my partner and my woman. That’s like winning the lottery. I got this through no fault or plan of my own. I got lucky here.I won this time.

A year feels like a lifetime and not enough time. And we have a lifetime left. That’s a gift.

Love - My Truth (written by my love)

I usually don’t go along with the whole inner child, things happened to me as a child that affect me today in some way. Which sort of makes me a hypocrite, because I have PTSD that began in my childhood. But I do try hard not to use it as a crutch or an excuse.

I mention that because I want to tell you about my childhood. You see it was violent, it was abusive and terrifying. The abuse I suffered was ongoing and extreme, the kind of craziness they write books, Lifetime movies and psychiatric reports about. It was terrible. Beyond terrible, it was obscenely horrible. I don’t talk about the specifics anymore, it does no good for anyone and it just sparks fires that take me weeks and months to extinguish in my heart and psyche.

Through this all my mother was present. And she was the one person who could have done something…anything. She could have stopped it. She could have prevented it. Or in the least she could have eased the resulting pain and trauma. But that didn’t happen. Instead much of the blame and responsibility was placed on my little shoulders. Often I heard things like “Jeffery if only you would…” or “Well you know what happens when you do that, what did you expect?” or the worst “When will you learn?”. All these things placed the abuse at my feet, my responsibility.

In a tangible and sad way I was abandoned by the one person who could have held me together and helped, in some way.

Much later, the day after my father’s funeral my mother said “I would have taken you and left and protected you. But he’d have found us and killed me’. At that point I was a father myself and all I could say is “So?”, my life, my freedom, my well being are irrelevant when it comes to my child’s safety. It was not a connecting moment, it just hammered home the truth, I was damned from the start.

So I started at odds with the first woman in my life. And that fractured relationship continued with every woman in my life.

Most of my romantic and sexual endeavors have been seeking, someone to tell me, I’m okay, it’s okay, to stay through the storms. To stand when I cannot. To approve of me and show me that I worthy of love. Because the little me was quickly and thoroughly convinced, I am not loveable. Because if I was…These things wouldn’t happen, she’d come to me and save me.

Twist all that up into the result of the abuse, the mistrust, anger, the anxiety, the PTSD and the suicidal idealizations and lifestyles. I was a mess. Romantically hopeless. And hopelessly romantic. Because someday…She’d come the one who’d save me, she’d walk right in and stop the next punch, the next wound, the next heartbreak. An expectation that far exceeds more than anyone should ask of another human being that isn’t a parent. I wasn’t looking for a partner, I was looking for a martyr. I wanted someone who’d bleed for me.

One after another women came into my life and fell in love with me. Madly and in some cases angrily. And I’d run them into the ground or they’d cross some imaginary line and I’d simply stop. Just stop, stop feeling, stop caring, stop participating. But I’d still hang on, because goddamn it…She was suppose to save me! And if there was no love left, well she could still do what I needed.

What a mess. A selfish and cyclical mess. One that would repeat over and over. Two or three co-habitations, a marriage, a divorce a couple engagements and more long term relationships beyond that. It was becoming so that the little voice in the back of my head would respond to a new relationship with ‘How long till you fuck, twist and break this one asshole?’

And that was the state of the union for a very long time. A deficit each new woman walked into. And eventually after my daughter’s mother and I went south and I tried dating a couple times I decided I would no longer do it. I was asking too much and I do not know how to give back.

Into this mess walks Miss Bev. A brave and crazy woman. Because I was sober when I met her and thinking clear I felt obliged to tell her I was broken, I was probably not all there and she’d be crazier than me for even trying. She took it in and responded “Yeah I know. But why don’t you let me decide?”

And she did, at times drawing back when I got too demanding, too wild or too crazy. Or more accurately, I drove her back. We broke and repaired a few times. All the while she made sure I knew she would love me because she saw the real me. And she would love me for the man who has gone to war and come back, scarred and walking with a limp, but still whole. Just a little shell shocked. But she also made sure I knew it was not her job to fix me. To take responsibility for the wounds and misdeeds of others. She would love and support me through the cleaning and clearing of old messes, but she was not going to do it for me. Because she couldn’t, in fact no one could. And I better see that. because this is not an unending offer. She has her dignity and life and if mine starts to erode hers she will protect it.

We’ve struggled much. Let’s face it, life ain’t a three act play. There’s no set up, conflict and resolution. It’s an ongoing thing. And we fall down. She has her times where I find myself wondering who the crazy one really is. But we get by. We get through. Sometimes it seems impossible, but I guess all great endeavors seem impossible at times. But we go forward and we have always had an unspoken (more or less) agreement, we would always move forward and if moving forward means going apart then that’s the way it is suppose to be.

In all of this we’ve fallen madly in love and sometimes madly out of love (but only for a few hours or days). But I have come to know. She is the love of my life. She is the one I’ve waited for. But exactly not the thing I was waiting for. It’s funny how life works. That paradox. The person I wanted was not the person I needed.

I love her more now than ever. And that scares me. So much. It trips me up and shuts me down sometimes. I adore her, I need her, I lust for her (just typing that has caused a stir in my loins), we have incredible and intense intimacy. It’s not sex. It’s just sex. It’s our thing. We have talks. we talk a lot. We are a nation of two. We have no real friends outside of us. We have acquaintances. We don’t need anyone else. No one else speaks our language and no one else knows how our gravity moves us. We fight and we growl sometimes and we say some stupid things. Sometimes those stupid things last longer than they should and pride gets in our way. I ain’t giving in…Well me either. And sometimes we come back together, in an angry heap on the living room floor spent and tired and still mad but not as much as before and in that love making we begin walking together again and the minor wound heals.

Always there’s that little kid me, that hurt and broken little boy who needs his mother to scoop him up and run away with him and run till the monsters can’t find him anymore. To make him safe. That never happened. That fear and fight became my only existence. I learned a hard lesson.

Trust comes easy to no one “I have trust issues” is the great cliche. Hey buddy don’t we all. You either get over them or you get out. But for me. For that little boy. Trust means more than just accepting that she may not decide to have sex with another man or steal my money. It’s life and death.

I trust her. I trust her and just her. I put all my eggs in one basket and I don’t regret it at all. She’s worthy of that and has earned it. Love is to little a word for what I have. It’s a misused and plastic word for a great thing. Calling what I have love is like calling an ocean wet.

She’s my world. And my world is safe in her.

We don’t need it, but if she came home today and said “Marry me, now, today.” I’d do it. Without hesitation or question. Well one…Where we getting the money for the license?…We’re broke honey.

And if she came home and in a calm and sincere voice said “I’ve got to go now, I need to leave here because my life is going somewhere else now.” I’d hurt and break I think. But I’d let her go, I’d even make sure she left as well as she could. because if you care and love someone enough, their needs, their happiness and that place in the world we all are searching for, is all you want. Even if it means they do it alone. Knowing they’re out there in the world finding where they belong. That’s enough.

My truth.