Every Scar is Our Song

Just like that it feels as if the storm has passed.
I know it's most likely just an illusion and all the pain will come rushing back without a moment's notice but, for now at least, the thought of you brings me only love and calm. There is a little ache that lives behind my heart but that will likely be there forever. I think it is a long healed scar that aches during emotional storms like an old war injury. It is a tender feeling but one that I can't help poking at occasionally, experimentally, as if to determine the nature or the cause of that long ago injury.

I'm not sure I'll ever know. I did realize today that my actions with you were very likely REactions instead. Pre-programmed into my subconscious by The Other One just as guilt is programmed by The First One. I'll call what happened "The Petulant Backlash".

I try so hard not to let my expectations dictate my actions with you or with the children. Never the less, I often find myself critiquing your behavior. Not in comparison to The Other One. Never in comparison to him, hut sometimes in comparison to an ideal I have built or what society has taught me of The Perfect Man. I hold you up to this ideal never once thinking that I don't even like these ideals and the one I truly love is you because you DON'T align with these ideals. Ideals like fake chivalry, misogyny, or narcissism. Your flaws are what draws me to you, are what make you attractive to me. And I don't just say that in a self placating way or in an attempt to blow smoke up your ass. I say it because it's true.

I love you because you haven't done the right thing, because you do have a weakness for me that supersedes what society deems is honorable. I love you because you are willing to break the rules to please me, you are willing to make yourself truly uncomfortable to make me happy. I love you because you honest feel that you are not worthy of me. These are the things that, in any other man, I would see and weak and annoying. In you, I see them as shining examples of how much you love me.

I love you because I am encouraged to be a better person, a more loveable person for you.

So, I am terrified that this thing we have created won't work out. That the fairy tale will be just as hokey and fake as all the other romantic horse crap we've been fed. But I'm calm now and, for whatever reason, I'm willing to wait to see what you decide.

But I know the storm will rise again. And I can't always promise that I will be strong enough to weather it.