Tuesday 20 January 2015

...say you love me.


“I think there's a difference between loving the idea of someone,
and actually loving who they really are.”
~ Jeff Eastin, screenwriter

















When I left the house one morning last month, I noticed the snow had already been brushed off my car. A few days earlier I came home after work to dinner ready on the stove, the wine bottle corked ready to be poured. The week before, he had hung a shelf in the bathroom while I was out. He makes my bed and washes my dishes and most Mon evenings he insists on taking my garbage and recycling to the curb. He bought me a stapler just because I said I didn’t have one. He wraps his arms around me when certain parts of my current reality get to be too much and drys my tears with a whisper, “I'm here”. He says all those perfectly timed cheesy lines like “you always look good” which used to make me want to throw up in my mouth a little. I can talk and laugh with him for hours without realizing it’s been hours. And fall asleep safely in his arms.

He tells me not to tell my friends about all this, for fear a group of their angry boyfriends will pound down his door for showing them up. I’m telling people anyway. And truth be told, he secretly likes that I do!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I remember the very first time I said it, scared to my core. The second time it just popped out. Both times I said it first, but it took me almost a year. The third time was faster; maybe I was older and wiser. Maybe I just wanted it to be so, to say it back. This time… I am hesitating.



          “Please don’t say you love me, ‘cause I might not say it back
          Doesn’t mean my heart stops skipping when you look at me like that.
          There’s no need to worry when you see just where we’re at.
          Just please don’t say you love me, ‘cause I might not say it back.”


Hesitating, yet also feeling like I am missing so many opportunities to say it and hear it; to feel it when it’s said out loud.



          “And fools rush in, and I’ve been the fool before.
          This time I’m gonna slow it down, ‘cause I think it could be more,
          The thing I’m looking for…”



Hesitating, because what if I’m wrong like the first time when it took him a month to say it back; or the second time when he said it back then walked away and hurt me anyway; or the third time… when I walked away. How many times do we get to say it, to feel it, to hear it in one lifetime?


          “Summer comes, winter fades, here we are just the same
          Don’t need pressure, don’t need change, let’s not give the game away.”


Hesitating, because perhaps there is something I am yet waiting for, some word or action or sign, to know it’s ok. As much as one can truly and fully know it’s ok…



          “Heavy words are hard to take, under pressure precious things can break
          And how we feel is hard to fake, so let’s not give the game away…”


Hesitating because, maybe I hope that with this whisper on paper, I won’t have to be the one to say it first.


 


          “There used to be an empty space, 
          a photograph without a face
          But with your presence and your grace,

          everything falls into place…”
            ~ Gabrielle Aplin,  
               Please don't say you love me






 








(PS. He said it first!)

1 comment:

Juanita said...

Happy for you!! He sounds like a wonderful man.