To My Great Love: Why I’m Worth It
Jake made me do this.
I try not to think of you very often and where you might be and who you are and when I will meet you. But this frozen over morning has been hell, so I’m sitting here at the reference desk trying not to bawl my face off as I write this letter to you and tell you that I’m only doing it because…Jake made me.
Once I had a dream about you. I couldn’t see your face, but the feel of you is something I will never forget. I was in a forest full of the tallest trees and you took my hand and led me down next to a fire. We stood there for a moment and then you helped me take a seat and I rested in the warmth of that fire and your eyes. You told me all your stories and I was home.
Jake says the point of this letter is to tell you, the “man of my dreams” — oooo, guess that’s a LITERAL thing for me — why you’d be lucky to have me. My insides shrink up a little bit at the thought of that. For all my blustering and good true words about being worthy of love, these words about me are ones that for many years have not come easily.
But, YOU are my great love. So, here we go….
When I was five or six years old, I had a pillow with Fievel on it from An American Tale.
It played the song, Somewhere Out There. The lyrics say, “Somewhere out there, someone’s saying a prayer…that we’ll find one another…” I would listen to it over and over again and curl up tight and pray for my one-day-great-love. For you. It now sounds utterly ridiculous to think a little boy somewhere near my age would have been out there praying to meet me one day too. But that’s the first reason you would be lucky to have me, I’ve been praying for you and thinking of you and giving up all the other almost loves that came before — for my entire life. It’s why I slapped Nick M. when he tried to kiss me in fourth grade. I knew that you existed and he wasn’t you.
I don’t know that I believe in soul mates but I do believe in great love.
I imagine it this way. One day when I am the oldest of olds, I will be lying on my deathbed. It will probably be in a hospital because that is how my overactive writer imagination sees it. I’m surrounded by family and all of the people I love and there is a little girl curled up in the bed next to me. I think she is my blood. Maybe a granddaughter or great-grand. Her tiny hand twists in the curls at my neck and she whispers up at me, “Tell me the story. One more time. Please. It’s my favorite one.” I will smile into her eyes and say, “Out of all the loves I have ever loved, and, sweet baby, there have been many…he was my great love.” Then I will tell her the story of you and I.
That will be the last story I tell before leaving this earth. The story of our great love.
That’s me. I love hard and fast and deep.
I’m trying to learn how to love slowly, more gently, but the fire that rages inside of me is just masked — it’s still a bonfire, it will never be a single match. I am messy and wild and dramatic and I will love you deeper than anyone you’ve met or read about or imagined.
And I will keep showing up. My love doesn’t disappear. I won’t ghost you. I won’t flake out. I won’t run.
I. Will. Remain. I will stay. I will hold your hand in the victories and hold your body in the defeats. I will not forget to remind you of why I chose to love you in the first place. I will honor your strength and be in awe of your character and tell you how handsome you are every single day.
I will challenge the crap out of you. I’ll make you think and rethink and wish you could just stop thinking but it will be the best thing because you will challenge me too. Together we’ll grow and evolve and become even more of who we are.
I am funny and hopeful and clever and ridiculous. I am a delight.
I won’t have a problem sitting on the same side of the booth as you and kissing you right there in front of a room full of people because when you look at me and the universe splits down the middle, I know spacetime will need a little bit of our love to sew it back up.
It’s crazy to think I’m writing this in the middle of my experiment with casual dating. I’m enjoying myself immensely and love meeting all these amazing humans and experiencing each of them. But this is a letter to you and one day you’ll know me better than anyone has ever, so I’ll tell you the truth…in the midst of it all…I miss you.
You who my heart has yet to choose, I miss. My soul already loves you.
Today I told someone, “great loves swim oceans, climb mountains, or simply pick up the phone to tell you they’ll be showing up at your door.” I have not even one doubt that when the time is right, you will do just that.
