love.

I often think about how maybe I wouldn't be so screwed up right now if I had someone. A partner. A person to just go through my life with, to lean on, to eat dinner with, watch TV with, run errands with, have sex with.... you know, the usual everyday stuff. And then I know that I am so not ready at all for anything like that, and I try to imagine the steps I'd have to take to change myself in a way that would make me comfortable enough to be with another person like that again. The more I think about that, the more it makes me even more not ready, despite knowing very much that I would benefit a great deal from having that kind of trust, intimacy and vulnerability with another person. And this isn't an emptiness I'm trying to fill. I'm not looking for someone to "complete me." On my own I don't feel hollow, which is how and why I can go so many years without being in a relationship. But more than that, it's that I already know who my love is. I've found that person, in no uncertain terms. I may not be able to have them, but I know them, I've experienced them, and the effort to reclaim myself to make myself in some way okay enough to meet someone new doesn't really appeal to me at all. Anyone else would only be a sad attempt at substituting what I already know in my heart, and that really isn't fair to anyone. I think about all the "true loves" I've had in my life, and compared to you they are nothing. I think back at the one person who broke my heart into a million pieces 10 years ago, and how much I thought we were so, so, so in love, and I don't even remember why I felt that way about him? I don't remember having deep conversations with him, or what we even talked about. We had good sex to be sure, so maybe it was just a chemistry thing, lust, and never love like I thought it was. It's so easy to mix up lust and love. It's so easy to drown in your own feelings to the point that you don't even notice they aren't being fully reciprocated. So I think maybe that's why with you, I am so 100% certain you are that once-in-a-lifetime encounter. The holy grail. It isn't that you and I are perfectly matched on paper, because really, we're probably anything but. But you were always there even when you weren't. Always watching over me, like I know you are now, even though you don't say so. It's an unbreakable connection that no amount of drama or hardship has been able to sever. Even if I never see or hear from you again, you were and always will be "The One." I have told you this many times, and I will tell you this again now: I would rather go through life alone than be with someone other than you. That isn't a choice, it's just the way it is. So instead of trying to make myself feel worthy enough to be with someone who isn't you, I need to keep trying to be worthy enough to be by myself...