YOU ARE MY EVERYTHING...SOMETIMES

I will admit it. I grew up watching Disney cartoons, where they always lived ‘happily ever after’. But – happily ever after what? Obviously, happily ever after finding each other and falling in love. It’s like they entered into this state of infinite, unassailable satisfaction (inner peace) and, thereafter, just because they were together, nothing else mattered. No lack, no struggle, no loss, no tragedy – nothing! – could really affect them after finding ‘True Love’, because, apparently, by so doing they had satisfied their deepest needs. In, and with, Love, they were absolutely content, needing nothing beyond the affirmation, companionship and support of their loved ones.

Well, that’s why they are called ‘fairy tales’. Because you wake up the morning after with the same fears and insecurities you went to bed with last night. Even more, you wake up with the same dreams. You still want the things you’ve always wanted. And it doesn’t really make a difference that the love of your life is lying down in the dark beside you. That fact alone just cannot compensate for everything else. And if you don’t know this - that it’s not their fault they can’t make every pain go away, or answer every question your heart is asking; that they are actually incapable of being the centre of your world – then you could even think that they’ve suddenly become inadequate. You could accuse them of ‘not loving you anymore’. But there are journeys each of us must embark on alone. Some things will always be your cross - and your cross alone - to bear. Not your wife’s. Not your husband’s. Not your children’s. Yours.

And it really isn’t ‘sweet’ to find someone you feel you can give up this primary responsibility for your own life and destiny to; someone who can ‘take care of you’ in every way possible. For you will always find disappointment at the end of that road. First, you will grow weak and indolent, slowly forgetting the ability to stand on your own feet and roar back at life. Then, by forgetting that ability you will also lose the very thing that made you so attractive in the first place (even to your own self). And, finally, you will cry out for help one day, as usual, and will only be greeted by silence. But if that day comes, don’t panic. Just remember that love is not there to replace everything else, and that the fact that it can’t doesn’t mean it’s not True Love.  

So don’t trade in your old friends; your old family; your old disciplines; the way you used to hustle; the way you used to get up, go out and make things happen; the way you used to believe and push through; the way you used to depend on you; all the things that got you to that moment when he or she saw you for the first time and fell in love. That was what they fell in love with, even if they don’t know it. It’s really sad, sometimes, when people ‘love’ other people by crippling them, and making them dependent; or when people do it to themselves for the sake of ‘love’. If there were an ideal relationship, for me, it would be this one: one in which neither party feels compelled to carry the other just to ‘feel strong’, or to be carried by the other just to ‘feel loved’. Like two overlapping circles, we must depend on each other for many, many things in a relationship. But there will always be those spaces where we must stand alone. And that is not a bad thing either.

Image taken from:

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