Gifts

A man once told me he could walk into any store and come out with twelve things that would be perfect gifts for me.  He was right.  Every gift, every word he ever sent my way resonated deep in that place that lets you know you've been seen, known for who you truly are.

Sadly, he's not giving me gifts anymore, and while the gifts themselves aren't things I'll miss, I'll miss his impulse to give me things.  That burning need in him to show me how he feels, to give me something tangible, something to hold in my hands, to thumb through, to admire on the wall--things that would make me think of him even in his absence.  I will miss him showing me how well he knows me, how much he loves me.  And I'll miss it most of all because I know he still wants to do those things for me, he still feels that way about me, but he isn't in a place where he feels he can or should.

I do not think we are at the end of our story with one another.  I really don't.  I've been praying and trying to figure out why this now, why this way, I have been asking God what to do, how to handle this situation, and after every prayer, another sign comes along to suggest that I shouldn't be in too big a hurry to let all of this go.  A song will come on the radio, the kind of song you never hear on the radio, and it will be one he and I shared.  I read a novel this morning, and in it a young woman gives a young man a gift that I gave him once.  These are just two of nearly a dozen little hints that I should let my belief in love guide me through this and stop believing that what is happening now is the end of all that we are to one another.

Would some people find this kind of thinking naive?  Certainly.  But I don't care.  My life is for me to live, and I will not have the way I feel regulated by the way others would react to this situation.  I know what I know, and I know how I feel, and at the end of the day, I sleep with and wake to myself, no one else.

So, I'm not ready to let go yet.  I'm not ready to say this deep, honest, passionate, easy connection between the two of us is over.  I'm not going to pursue it, I'm not going to will it into anything other than what it is right now--which admittedly isn't much--but I do not believe in a world where people who love each other as we do don't end up together.  It may not be today, it may not be next year, but I believe in the power of what we have, and I believe that when the time is right, we will have it again.  Until then, we live our own lives, and I pray we come back to one another sooner rather than later.  But above all, I have discovered that even when things don't go as planned, even when you are hurt and betrayed and feel the world crashing in on you, if there is real love at the center of what is happening, that love is still worth believing in, and learning that I still believe is the greatest gift anyone could give me.