I loved someone once who was disabled. I didn’t care that they were disabled. I didn’t care that if we lived together I’d probably be supporting them for the rest of their life. I didn’t care about the hospital visits. I didn’t care about their limitations. Because it was them. Because if it’s them then all that work isn’t work at all.
One of the things that ended up driving us apart in the end though is that they didn’t believe me when I told them this. They didn’t believe that I didn’t care about their disabilities. They didn’t believe that I was prepared to support them because my love turned all of that work into nothing.
As we drifted apart I learned something about myself. I can only fight to try to make someone believe that I care about them for so long. The hospital visits, the care tasks, the financial stuff, the limitations, I don’t care about. I could do that forever without a second thought. Fighting to be believed though? To have my love for someone questioned by them at every turn? I can’t do that.
It’s been a while since I drifted apart from this person I thought I’d be spending the rest of my life with so I feel like I can talk about it now and I guess I wanna suggest that maybe you should believe people sometimes when they say that they love you because your insistence that they don’t could be the thing that makes you drift apart.
