To The One I Divorced: A Better Understanding

Mary,
I've listened to others talk about love in a way that is indicative of their dependence and unhappiness.  And when I think of you and feel this ache I wonder if I am like them. I don't want to have to prove to you that unhappiness is not what drives me to your memory.  

I don't know what to do about my presumptuousness, that you feel.....something.....that after 7 years of a friendship well beyond friendship in whatever form, that you feel more than nothing but a content, nostalgic desire for eternal distance.  I could be so wrong.  Maybe that is exactly what you feel. 

It wouldn't be an issue that I only write you for my own sake, but I would be the fool if you looked upon everything I wrote with that distant pity, and maybe pain that comes from the sadness you feel over not loving those that have loved you terribly.  

A human being's anger with another in these situations is heartbreaking.  It offers nothing to the world and still, it is there.  

It killed me when you left with Richard.  I thought, prophetically, that you should be in Thailand (which is still an experience, despite your reservations, that I wish for you in this lifetime).  And then who knows....And I can almost hear you thinking "this is just the way I am Emma".  And I loved and love you for it.  That pain was good to me.  And on a shallow level it was the beginning of my ability to feel angry with god.  (what led to strong confusing feelings in me that would separate us.  I felt ashamed of that failure to love you enough to overcome my own desires.  And I believed we could overcome it if we learned to communicate.  But I keep realizing that you really really tried to communicate and that I FUCKED up).

I want to have faith that my words are not a disturbance to your happiness.  That your happiness is not that fragile an if it were, only half of me would want to stop talking.  This faith I am writing through often had the power to threaten our relationship.  I still don't know if I ought to write through it.  

You love your first (and maybe last) man...a lot.  I'll never know if you love him more than Kristin or more than you once loved me; if he offered you a great escape from what people call a lesbian world that you secretly an bravely accepted, or if no such world ever existed to you.  

Mary, whom I love, I feel sorrow that I hate the way that you treated me.  And I really do truly understand that my hate may not be a result of any sickness of yours but only my unfulfilled wishes that were different from yours.  And even if they were of a sickness, at least in part, what more is that than a tragedy?  It is a tragedy...But you must know that I cannot leave things at that.

I want to let it all go for my love of you.  Soft, simple words.  Let you read my mind.  And here I am unable to do so.  And I have seen this process in others from a distance and the speakers (the pleaders) look tragic and desperate.  But the truth, which you have revealed to me that you already know and can look softly upon, is that these people are in different places than the "other" and cannot be met where they are.  Maybe, no matter how often you show me, I struggle to believe that I am one of these people and that you are the "other".  Maybe this is a reality that continues to cause you discomfort and fuel your pity and believe it or not, that is not what I want or wish for either of us  (nor do I assume that what you feel is pity).  

You were my life partner an you left in the night with a whimper.  Every conventional perspective on this situation is about safeguarding from pain instead of love.  I don't want to be conventional.  And still the pain and utter confusion are there.  

I have learned so much from you and I love you.  I am sitting here looking around and listening to where I am, stunned, still seeing you do good work in me as I do good work in myself.  I grew into as much of a doer as I am a listener.  I have become what I saw in you, still wholly myself and god do I thank you for it.  It feels like my destiny.  And it feels like my destiny to try to do things well.  Especially with the person that inspires me to embrace the pain of goodness, as much as any terrifying adventure, act of solitude, or moment of beauty ever could.  

If you really don't think that we should ever talk about this then there is nothing I can do.  But I'll ask you for your courage over and over as I have always asked you for it.  I am asking for my own.  I want to do things well, in opposition to the alternative.  I say patiently that I will not allow the alternative to make any sense.  All the ugly pain we have seen (every person) and felt and fueled; I do not want that.  

If you hear nothing in this but me wanting you then shame on you.  Let me love be my love.  And if you see me an yourself in these words then work with me and help me figure out how to make this less ugly.  An if you know that your answer is truly silence, I believe you.  

I love you and always will,

Emma