Sarah....
Thank you.
Thank you for being so patient with me through my shortcomings and stupidities, through all the endless frustrations I cause. Thank you for demanding honesty from me and not punishing me for giving it. Thank you for caring enough to see right through me.
I don't know how to tell you about all the walls around me, or how ever since I was hurt so badly one time - and that once was enough - I never let anyone ever get close enough to try again, least of all you. That I painted something in gilded-lily colors and focused on it to the exclusion of everything else, convinced I'd never see something beautiful again (when I never really looked). That I decided love like that could only ever happen once for someone like me, and losing it one time would be losing it always. That it's easier to focus on what you lost than on something new and beautiful, because you don't want to think about the pain of losing that, too.
Love can hurt and love can heal, and sometimes it's so uncomfortable - scary, even - to think of all the dark places being illuminated, or of new buildings popping up where razed ground used to exist. And I know I haven't given you everything, I know I've held back, and Sarah, I am so sorry. You deserve everything from me, all of it. I've been afraid. Stupidly, childishly afraid. Of believing all the amazing good things that come out of love could happen with someone new. Of believing you. And even after saying I love you, I've been more restrained with my heart than you deserved.
You're going to wonder what's spawning this, and it's simply this: that after pouring my heart out to you tonight, after telling you three things you didn't want to hear for every one you did, after all that sort of raw sickening honesty, you looked down at me and you asked what you could do to make me feel special. And when I stared at you in confusion, having expecting anger or sadness or yelling or anything but this, you smiled and pushed my hair back and let me lay my head in your lap and you said that you could tell no one had loved me like this in a very long time.
...and you're right.
I've spent so long helping people and giving to people and being needed by people that I've misequated that into love. And it is love, but only partially. Love is about receiving those things, too, reciprocity, the beauty of knowing not only that people need you but that you're needed, and special, and loved. That someone out there finds you amazing enough to want to know what makes you feel special. And if you don't know yet why I got ridiculously teary-eyed staring up at you, well, that's why.
Thank you for letting me feel that. I had forgotten, I had forgotten it all. ....and I can barely breathe thinking of it now, and how beautiful it is, and how beautiful you are.
Laying there in your arms tonight while I talked and cried I felt.....beautiful, and special, like I mattered. So much love. You have no idea what a gift that was to me. You have no idea that it changed so many things in my heart and tore down every wall and every barrier. Thank you. For loving me like no one else has. ....ever.
And now, Sarah, I've let go of so many things, and made all the choices that matter. I want to build dreams for you, I want to build dreams with you, I want to give you everything to make you smile. I want to belong to you. I want everything that's you and I'm willing to give everything that's me, unequivocally. ...I realized tonight that I've been broken and stuck mourning the past when the future with you is all I want.
Thank you for loving me. I love you, more than you could imagine right now, so much it's almost scaring me because I haven't let myself feel anything like this in so long. It's beautiful.
I'll leave you with this, a line Ava showed me from a story he read somewhere once, that he used to keep on his messenger info. It made me think of you:
And in the end, after all we have seen and done, yours is the only name I want to speak.
Aishiteru.
Ry
Thank you for being so patient with me through my shortcomings and stupidities, through all the endless frustrations I cause. Thank you for demanding honesty from me and not punishing me for giving it. Thank you for caring enough to see right through me.
I don't know how to tell you about all the walls around me, or how ever since I was hurt so badly one time - and that once was enough - I never let anyone ever get close enough to try again, least of all you. That I painted something in gilded-lily colors and focused on it to the exclusion of everything else, convinced I'd never see something beautiful again (when I never really looked). That I decided love like that could only ever happen once for someone like me, and losing it one time would be losing it always. That it's easier to focus on what you lost than on something new and beautiful, because you don't want to think about the pain of losing that, too.
Love can hurt and love can heal, and sometimes it's so uncomfortable - scary, even - to think of all the dark places being illuminated, or of new buildings popping up where razed ground used to exist. And I know I haven't given you everything, I know I've held back, and Sarah, I am so sorry. You deserve everything from me, all of it. I've been afraid. Stupidly, childishly afraid. Of believing all the amazing good things that come out of love could happen with someone new. Of believing you. And even after saying I love you, I've been more restrained with my heart than you deserved.
You're going to wonder what's spawning this, and it's simply this: that after pouring my heart out to you tonight, after telling you three things you didn't want to hear for every one you did, after all that sort of raw sickening honesty, you looked down at me and you asked what you could do to make me feel special. And when I stared at you in confusion, having expecting anger or sadness or yelling or anything but this, you smiled and pushed my hair back and let me lay my head in your lap and you said that you could tell no one had loved me like this in a very long time.
...and you're right.
I've spent so long helping people and giving to people and being needed by people that I've misequated that into love. And it is love, but only partially. Love is about receiving those things, too, reciprocity, the beauty of knowing not only that people need you but that you're needed, and special, and loved. That someone out there finds you amazing enough to want to know what makes you feel special. And if you don't know yet why I got ridiculously teary-eyed staring up at you, well, that's why.
Thank you for letting me feel that. I had forgotten, I had forgotten it all. ....and I can barely breathe thinking of it now, and how beautiful it is, and how beautiful you are.
Laying there in your arms tonight while I talked and cried I felt.....beautiful, and special, like I mattered. So much love. You have no idea what a gift that was to me. You have no idea that it changed so many things in my heart and tore down every wall and every barrier. Thank you. For loving me like no one else has. ....ever.
And now, Sarah, I've let go of so many things, and made all the choices that matter. I want to build dreams for you, I want to build dreams with you, I want to give you everything to make you smile. I want to belong to you. I want everything that's you and I'm willing to give everything that's me, unequivocally. ...I realized tonight that I've been broken and stuck mourning the past when the future with you is all I want.
Thank you for loving me. I love you, more than you could imagine right now, so much it's almost scaring me because I haven't let myself feel anything like this in so long. It's beautiful.
I'll leave you with this, a line Ava showed me from a story he read somewhere once, that he used to keep on his messenger info. It made me think of you:
And in the end, after all we have seen and done, yours is the only name I want to speak.
Aishiteru.
Ry