WARNING: Please don’t read if you’re watching Grey’s Anatomy or The Good Wife on channels other than MNET 101 as will DEFINITELY ruin the series for you.
So the other day I told my Guy I love him. It was a different kind of telling because I’d never told him that way before.
Ever loved someone from a place of fear? You love them, deeper than you want to admit because something, at some point, taught you to never love that completely. It hurts too much.
That was me.
I loved my Guy but I never wanted to ever let him know how much.
I’d watch him sleeping and want to tell him in his sleep that I’d love him forever and ever. I never did.
I’d show him love but just enough to show him I cared but not enough that he’d “take me for granted.”
Once he said, “I’m the Love of your life.” I must’ve rolled my eyes because no man, I’d decided, would EVER hold such a title in my life. How dare he assign that title to himself!!!!
Then last year I was watching The Good Wife. Then SO unexpectedly Will died. Just like that. He was gone. I watched in disbelief hoping that episode was someone’s bad dream, the horrible nightmare would end and Will would be alive again.
But he was dead. Gone forever. I didn’t want to watch anymore! How could they kill Will just like that! I raged.
But I couldn’t stop watching. I had to see what Alicia would do. How would she respond to the love of her life been taken away so suddenly? No mercy. No warning. Just like that, he was gone.
She didn’t get to say goodbye. At the time they’d broken up. Still very much in love but they’d allowed “stuff” to get in the way. Now there was no second chance. No do overs.
I cried for days. For Alicia. And for me. Coz it took watching that tragedy, no matter how fictitious on tv, to realise that this Guy, this beautiful man named Rico Viviers WAS the love of my life.
I had loved him longer than I cared to admit.
All those years it was him I’d waited for. He was the dream I dreamed of since I was a child old enough to realise I wanted a husband one day.
He was my Will.
He was the one I saw when I listened to Ed Sheeran’s ‘Thinking Out Loud’.
I’d love him at 70. And beyond.
I’d loved him and yearned for him all the part of my life that mattered.
I cried over all the silent treatments I’d given him over the years. All the times I’d let “stuff” get in the way. And I cried because my Will was not dead. He was right here with me and I had our Now to love him completely. Without fear. Because loving him as truthfully as I could was a gift to me.
A few weeks ago I watched Merideth in Grey’s Anatomy wish her husband a safe trip.
“I wish I was coming with you,” she said as he was leaving. I knew then he wouldn’t be coming back. And he didn’t.
Last episode I watched she went off on a couple that was allowing “stuff” to get between them.
They could fight, they could argue, she told them because they still had each other to do so. “My husband is dead!” She told them. “I’d give anything to do any of those things with him!”
We should never look at life or love through the eyes of death.
I trust that my Guy and I will have decades more to have and love each other.
But I’ve come to realise that loving with reserve is not good enough.
So I finally ignored the fear and wrote this for my Guy: ‘I never told you this before because I was afraid to. But YOU Are the Love of my life. Having You is the best part of my every day. I love you love you love you. And if you never did a thing for me I’d still love you madly and wildly because you’re rooted deep in my heart. You. Not the stuff about you. Not the stuff you do- but You .’