The Crib Text: Epilogue
Everyone asks, “How did you know?” “What made you decide?”
Pointing to when, exactly, I knew that I would spend the rest of my life with Iain Whiteside is like trying to point to when I knew that my name was Kathryn Elizabeth Williams. At one point I did not know, and then at some point I did. My knowing of these facts were not revelations worthy of calendar marking because they were just realizations of things that were always true. I can’t really remember not knowing my own name and I can’t really remember not knowing that Iain was, to use a cliché “The One.”
Apparently I was never really the fall-in-love type — as has been repeatedly brought to my attention by the extreme shock of all of my friends at the news of my engagement. (If I had a dime for every “You were the last person I would have thought…”) To be fair to them, I have spent most of my adult life crusading against RomCom Fairy Tale love stories. But, to be fair to my former cynical self, I am pretty sure I always conceded that it was possible, theoretically, for some people to find Soul Mates. I just thought it was extremely over-hyped in modern culture. I and certainly didn’t think I would be of those people.
I still don’t believe that “There is someone for everyone” or that the Fullest Happiest Life is achieved by being eternally wedded to one person. Obviously, 100% full and happy lives are lived by people in all myriads of relationship or non-relationship statuses. Stati. And out of something like respect for that spectrum, I’ve been self-conscious about publicly expressing (gushing) my feelings about Iain. (And also out of abashed hypocrisy for previous claims I’ve made about annoying Couple People.)
But f*ck it. I’ve been in a Shout It From The Rooftops kind of mood lately. (Literally. See former post.) I wrote a letter to Iain last August when we were traveling separately which sort of answers the “How did you know?” question. It has been abridged and edited for public consumption (though still contains a few inside jokes and Hamilton references).
My dearest, love. (with a comma after dearest)
I miss you.
Lo! The weight of the steely anchor in my chest at the thought of not being there to watch you run up my beautiful mountain. My ribs are cold. And on your birthday, darling. I am cinched from behind my belly button and it stings.
There you are an ocean away.
I suppose that, at least, I have an excuse to write you a love letter. Did you know I am always writing you love letters? Well, they’re not letters to you, per se. Because, though it is you I am grateful for, it’s not really you that I’m grateful to. It wasn’t you who made you the other half of me, is it? You are a gift.
There are two things happening here, with us: something lovely and something terrifying. We are in love which is lovely. Every day you make me feel happy and beautiful and alive. But darling there is something else. I Love you. And that is the terrifying thing. Do you see it? Do you see that I am utterly and nakedly afraid? Nothing is more harrowing than the knowledge that your heart is beating inside someone else’s body.
Do you know this? That we are bound by something beyond ourselves? Can’t you see it? I’ve never been so certain of anything so unfathomable. It has nothing to do with what we do or where we are or who we become. It cannot possibly be earned or contrived or deserved — we have done nothing to make it so. We are mere conduits.
Do you see the cause for fear? If we were just in love, we could enjoy each other’s company, work to grow our trust and intimacy, practice effective communication and compromise etc etc and hedge/control the ups and downs in our relationship as best we could for as long as energy and compatibility and mutual commitment allowed. We would be in control. And on one level, that is the case. We are in love. We are, as independent sovereign beings, working together to build a lasting relationship.
But something else has happened. The membrane that separates one living thing from another — the border between You as a person and Me as a person — has a hole. And we are both exposed.
This must be Love, or at least an infinitesimal microexpression of it. It is so obvious to me. Do you sense it? I don’t think it even matters if we know it, or if we bother to consciously distinguish it from “being in love.” It would be there regardless, knitting us together in ways that bring deeper joy and deeper pain than we will be able to articulate.
The sentence syntax isn’t even right. “I” “Love” “You” makes it seem as though I am doing something and you are the object of the action. It should be “Love Has Us.” In her grip, we are helpless captives. And when we are ever “out of love”, we will be completely defenseless, so eternally bound are we.
As much as I would like to, I cannot disappear your insecurities . I cannot promise that I will never resent you or want to be apart from you or intentionally or unintentionally make you jealous or sad. But I will never leave you and I will never not Love you. I have no choice. You have exposed in me the hole that connects me to the very Stuff Of Life.
I have the honor to be your obedient servant,
Katie
