I want to be someone's forever...

“I want to try with someone who loves me enough to try with me. I want to grow old looking at the same face every morning. I want to grow old looking at the same face every night at the dinner table. I want to be one of those old couples you see still holding hands and laughing after fifty years of marriage. That's what I want. I want to be someone's forever.”
~Rachel Gibson~

 

 

Doing what I do for a living, I'm allowed a very intimate look into people's lives...people have to trust that I will not harm them. People come to me for help and sometimes they have to tell me things that they don't tell the rest of the world. Much like a confessional, people tell me things as they lie face down on the warmth and safety of my table. Occasionally they're embarrassed or ashamed: about the things they do, what they don't do, how they do or don't take care of themselves and the traumas they've had in mind or body or soul. The stresses of money, or work, or their marriage or their impossible children. I share a little bit of my story too. Pieces of my story allows them to be brave and talk. To trust me. I share. They share. I store the things they tell me away like the secrets they can be, keeping them safe with the myriad of other people's confessions that I harbor quietly. These people trust me. For good reason. Because sometimes when they are able to speak of these things, they can gain peace and stop hurting. I am their vault.

Occasionally, I run into someone that steals a piece of my soul or makes me want to be a better person. The fragments of their story are so touching that knowing that intimate detail of their life makes me blush, not from embarrassment...but because they trust me enough to share it with.

 

I have someone who I work with that is getting on in age. Vibrant, loving and remarkable, this is the kind of woman I would love to be when I get older. Her strength is only matched by her compassion and her beauty. She loves me. I worship her. She's the incarnation of all things good in a body that has experienced everything bad. She never lets on to anyone the kind of life she's had. She's a force of nature. She is the ocean. Beautiful and sparkling on the surface, but runs deep and in her depths there lies a darkness that you can't see that is still and cold. She makes the weather. Her entire being could hold The Universe and I'm in awe of her.

On the rare occasions I get a glimpse of who she really is, I am always brought to tears.

One day, not long ago, she got on my confessional. I could tell it was a big one...I could feel the atmosphere change, storm clouds begin to brew.

"I live with this...I don't tell my children. My husband is not doing so well...he's slipping further away from me."

The racking sobs shook her entire body. The heavens opened up and the downpour began. I could feel the lightning ready to strike. The hairs on my arms stood straight up. I could smell the ozone.

"I thought he was watching tv last night, but he was just sitting there thinking. Quiet. Just thinking. Then he came up behind me and held me. Just held me. And told me he knows he's slipping away."

CRACK! Lightning flew across the sky in an bolt quick and bright. The winds picked up and waves began to crash over the side of my table. I could scarcely retain my footing.

"He said he doesn't want to leave me alone. But, he can feel himself slipping. I don't want him to go. I am not ready to lose him. Not when it took us so long to find each other."

A wave crashed over me. It knocked me flat out. Her tempest blew me over.

She is me. Or who I could be in 30 years. She lived much the same life I did when I was married to The Dreaded Ex. Except hers was worse. And she found love. Very late in life. The real deal..She's madly in love with her husband, and he worships her more than I do. Her beloved knows everything about her life, her experiences and loves her all the more for it. Everything. The beautiful. The painful. The atrocious. He is her rock in life's storms. She can't think of life without him. I don't want to even imagine what it would be like if she lost him. My heart shattered for her.

I clung to her, promising that I would do everything I could to help in any way I could...that what she told me would stay with me and she calmed. She told me more. Unloaded her cargo into my vault. The seas calmed and the sunshine peeked from behind the clouds again. My cargo hold was heavy with her burden.

As I smoothed her wispy hair and held her fragile aging body, I cried. For her, but also for the part of myself that recognizes that what she has with the man of her heart is what I think everyone longs for. And to lose it will be a tragedy of epic proportions. The Universe will be mourn when it happens.

 

But, you can't keep this kind of thing to yourself. It haunts me.

Being divorced after a bad marriage, learning who I am as a woman and attempting to date has been discouraging to say the least. I've met every possible type of man. Good ones. And not so good ones. I've broken hearts and had my heart broken. How she and this man found one another is a miracle. Relationships have changed so much that it's more common to have a pairing of convenience rather than something real. Something lasting. I realize I am not remotely brave enough to be able to put who I am on the table with someone and say "Here. Here I am in my completely broken and messed up glory. I'm insecure, I'm afraid, and I don't want you to hurt me because I'm terrified of being hurt any more than I already have. Love it or leave it." 

 

They'd leave. They always do.

She was and is the bravest person I know. To raise her children after leaving a monster of a father and to finally find a love that is so rare that one believes the only place you can find it is in stories. She's strong. Fighting a battle with a mind that slips away slowly. Painfully. And still carries a smile on her sweet face.

I've been walking through days wondering how to process this.

All I can see in my mind, is her walking off with the love of her life on borrowed time. Their knotted and bent fingers clasped together. Holding onto one another hopefully. With pure, unadulterated love and devotion. My Great-Grandparents had this. My Grandparents had this. My Granny and Poppa had this. My parents have this. If I can't, then by God...I hope they can have my opportunity by proxy.

I can honestly say, I can see my future alone and it doesn't scare me. What scares me is looking to an uncertain future with someone and having to lay it all out on the table like they have. It terrifies me to think I could ever trust someone with my story enough to share my life with them. I don't know that I'll ever find my port in the storm, my rock to cling to. So, I stay at sea...with a full vault of people's secrets and burdens. My heart aches and I quietly wish for the kind of love she has, but to see it...to really see what success in love is, it's paralyzing. I'm too fearful. I still don't think I'm worthy of THAT kind of love. I don't know if I could ever be with someone who knows everything important about me and not be ashamed. I couldn't look in someone's eyes and know that I could trust them with everything important to me. Not again. Not like them...

God, I pray they have years left together. I pray that life is kind to them. I would give up my chance to ever find what they have, just so that they can have it for as long as God will give it to them. Because frankly, I don't believe I'll find it myself. So, damnit...someone should get my time!

I want to be someone's forever. But, since I can't...can't they have mine?