The letter I need the guts to send. Or to say.
2005-08-25 at 3:15 p.m.
Dear Person Whom I Love,I hope you'll just read, and maybe think about this. I'm not looking for a response now and I'll leave it up to you if you ever respond at all. I'm not looking for your opinion, and you'll probably have one. That's fine--that's good, even, but that's not what this statement, for lack of a better word, is about. You don't even have to think about this today or tomorrow, but I hope my voice lives in the back of your brain for you to dust off and think about one day soon. Because this is too important to ignore.
This letter isn't about decisions you make on your health, or how you spend your time, or choices you make about your own life. Those are all up to you and always have been. Instead, this is about a choice you make about my life.
Recently, and more than once, you have said some awful--hurtful--even cruel things to me, about me, and about people I also love. I'm sure you had reasons, and believed those reasons, even. Those reasons aren't important right now, whether they're right or wrong aren't important either. Even whether what you said was truthful doesn't matter. Whether you meant them or not, you said them and never ever apologized for them, took them back, or tried not to make them. They're said, and they're out there like voice bubbles poisoning the air between us.
And I've continued to love you. And I've kept you in my life because pain and all, it's better than not having you in my life. And I want to be in yours. You are irreplaceable.
But one day, and one day soon, those remarks and that pain will be too much and I won't be able to afford the hurt they cause in my own life. And for my own health, I'll need to make a choice that will have only one real option. As much as it will kill a part of me, I'll withdraw, and I will be gone. Emotionally and physically. I will not be a part of your life.
It will be my choice, but not really a choice at all. For my own safety, I'm partway there already.
So here's my offer. If your remarks are a slow-death way to get me out of your life, I will tell you this now. If you want me out, gone, uninvolved, please just say so. Tell me you want to be alone. I will stay away.
Because I love you.
I will stay away and go on living and growing and loving and being someone you could be proud to know until that day when you tell me you want me to come back. I will leave that option open.
Because I love you.
I won't speak for anyone else in the position I'm in, because I don't know that they have the same boundaries on their pain, or the same limitless love for you. I only speak for me.
But here is something else I know. The things you say to me with your face twisted and ravaged and fierce, your voice rasping and your fists clenched, will drive me away at some point. And a departure under those circumstances will be almost irreparable.
If that is not your goal, I hope you think about what I've said here. I hope you think about why you say them, and I hope you think about whether those reasons are from your heart or from some other place.
If that is your goal... that you are left alone, that I am far far away... please just ask me to stay away instead of pushing me away, wound by raw and awful wound. Part of my heart would wither, but I would. Quickly. Cleanly. For you.
Because I love you.
I love you just the way you are, but I love you too much to leave things this way.