I thought I’d show our daughter what it meant to love and be loved. I’d love you so fiercely that she could go through life boldly, knowing that kind of thing existed. My greatest fear in life was that someone else could do that better.
I thought I’d show her precisely, the way I love you, beyond the immediacy of cohabitation and domesticity. She would help me create a fairytale princess, like the ones she grew up reading about. She would help me propose to you. She’d bring you flowers on our wedding day. Through the aisle, between our friends and family. In a chateau on a hilltop, overlooking the romantic ideal we had for another life, in a different place. I thought I’d show her why we chose to share this space and build a home.
I never really did a great job at that, though I tried with all my heart. I slowly eroded over the course of a year, week after week, with the late night phone calls. The giddy giggles and laughter downstairs pierced me through the walls of that recklessly imperfect home I tried to build for us. That little old house protected me from nothing, especially the sound of your happiness outside of it. Sleepless and sober, I could feel your smile from the discomfort of our bed. I knew I’d lost you. If only I listened as actively when you were standing in front of me as I did through those walls.
I loved you from an illusory distance while I still had you physically here. Afraid to be close, I left every day for you, I worked to provide a life for our family. It wasn’t much, but it was something. I tried to replace what I couldn’t provide in touch or time with material possessions and financial security. In my world, that was the only value you saw in me. You never felt the romance of economic provision. God knows I tried to.
I came home every night exhausted. I’d toss my whole body into the swollen door and stumble onto the creaky floor. Reviving me was the familiar smell of your service to our family. You cooked from the heart and I could always taste that; it was my second favourite flavour of you. You cleaned honestly. You always tried to make my life easier. You lost the love, but kept the table delicious, the unsung last mile in our dysfunctional supply chain. I put that food on the table and that roof over our heads. Your lost the comfort and joy that came from keeping it clean. I lost the respect for your role in it all.
You found that comfort in others. I never found the respect, and I’ll likely regret that forever. Then, there was pain. There was lying and cheating and stealing.
I learned through this pain that I can still show her what love means, beyond the proximal nature of it. She will always know that nobody loves you like I do. She’ll get to see the reality in love. It may not be the fairytale I hoped we’d write for her. Although, it’s probably better she learns early that fairytales are the softcore porn of literature. I suppose that’s not really my place to judge, you’re the one uniquely qualified to be critical of genre.
She may never sit and watch a film with us, nor referee the empassioned debate about its writing thereafter. She may not catch the bond, the commitment, the boredom, the yearning, the laughter, the love that we learned about in San Junipero. She’ll learn that sometimes, most times, to be in love means to suffer. Love means pain, and pain means work. Work tethers us to reality, and in its deficiency was the blossoming of the mercurial little heartbreaker that rested inside of you.
I don’t know how to love you from a real distance. I don’t know how to love you through all this pain. My mind is open, and I will learn how. Our daughter will know the boundless, infinitely intentional nature of love. She will learn that love does not make demands, and it does not depend on reciprocity. My love, this love, our love, does not depend on anything, nor anyone. She will learn not to depend, and that could be the most powerful lesson I have to offer.
Maybe she’ll share in my dreams of a life together. A different life in a different world, a fantasy, much like the ones you pursued outside of our reality.
Impossible to go back without the blessing of everyone who knows that broken home. We don’t need to be like them. We’ve always had comfort in knowing we weren’t. We loved each other for the little anomalies we both were. You and I are not everyone, especially to her. We are everything.
