A letter to my lost lover:
To the love of my life, It was 11 years yesterday that my dad died. I thought it was ten years. How fast it goes. You have it more right than I knew. You live life on your own terms and I couldn't understand all of it. I of course understood much of it, but there have been many choices you made that have baffled me, challenged me, taught me, scared me, hurt me and many other such feelings. Yet you are true to yourself, always true to you and rarely veer off course from what it is that you want or need either in the past, present or future. Is that right? For you it is. Is that wrong? For others it may be. For me, often times it was. Whose perspective is more important, more meaningful, more valid and who is it that gets to make that decision? Its impossible to know.
In the past I have definitely resented you for the course you have set for yourself, as it invariably changes with old friends or new, past favorites or new, ocean or desert, new investment interests or old, functional relationships or dysfunctional, kids at home or no longer, boating or golfing........the variables are constantly changing and thus so is your perspective and who am I to decide what is true or false, real or pretend? Important or unimportant? Our perspectives are different. We are different. Everyone is different. So I have come to the conclusion that it is unfair of me to resent the bulk of your behaviours.
For example, most recently you spending months away golfing while you've repeatedly told me that it is being with your kids that has prevented you from bieng with me, that it is waking up in your own bed and making them breakfast that you need and clearly one cannot exist with the other, that you like them around, waking up knowing they are there etc. So I have felt a fool. I have felt betrayed. I have felt decieved and manipulated and I have felt to be living the life of a victim. Because essentially nothing you've done in months has had really anything at all to do with your kids, or your house or your bed or even your city and most people in it. Im not wrong, because that is my perspective. But does that mean you are wrong? Or does it mean that you make life what you want it to be, that you know what you want and you go out and get it and that you make the very most of every minute of time that we have all been so graciously allotted.
Does it mean you lied to me all these years or does it simply mean your needs and wants changed course? What is the truth, the reality, your version or mine? I don't think there is one, because it is different for everyone. Everyday. So I wont resent you anymore and I won't try to understand what it is that you are doing so far from loved ones months on end, hitting the same ball over and over and gleaning more satisfaction and pleasure from that repetitive act than clearly everything and everyone that constitutes the other part of your life. How can I understand that? I don't golf. I havent gone away with friends for weeks and months so how could I possibly resent you for choices you make that I can and will, never know myself?
I can only feel sadness that I went from being your golf, to being someone you can live without in your life. One day it will be golfs turn when you become too old and golf becomes too hard and something or someone will rise up to take its place. I envy you that. God I wish I could do that. God I wish that one thing could bring me such pleasure no matter how many times I repeated it. I have never found that something. I did however find the someone, that made anything and everything whether good or bad, fun or boring, pleasureable, and enjoyable and special. So how are we any different?
You found a something and I found a someone and your something and my someone fulfilled each of us in the very same way. I have minimized your golf as a game and maximized me as more valuable and important. Who said? Me? Why is my perspective any more important than yours because they are different? Does that make mine right and yours wrong? Of course not. It is simply a matter of individual preferences and choice and what is right for one person is wrong for the next person and that is something that people can agree on. So I am sorry for resenting you, for resenting your choices and behaviors and for not understanding this. If it is golf that makes you happy love, then by God you should play as much as you can because the first rule of love is that you just want the one you love to be happy and you do everything you can to help them be happy. I thought I was doing that but I was wrong.
I was blinded by your life and kids and circumstance and insecurity and hurt and jealousy and I sacrificed so so so much of myself in all the wrong ways for all the wrong reasons and actually expected appreciation to be expressed. Those weren't the acts of love, those were the acts of someone who thought they knew what love was supposed to be and now I know that my choices weren't made from love, they were ultimately made for bargaining, manipulating, for trying to create the relationship that I wanted, that worked for me. After all, you chose them, and I chose you and that ultimately was supposed to make you happy and appreciate me, which in turn, would help you to ultimately choose me. Instead of that story playing out, the very behaviours that I alone chose of myself hurt me, weakened me, made me dislike and disrespect myself and in turn, you chose no one. You chose a game - golf.
I have learned that I must question and evaluate all of my decisions and actions and discern what is my motive, is it pure, is it honest, does it come from a place of understanding, compassion, integrity, love and acceptance of what is, not what was or what could be. Nobody will ever understand everything about other people but everyone sure can try. The only way to do that is to be completely honest with oneself and look at our own individual behaviours and motives. Ultimately everyone needs to take responsibility for ourselves and hope that that is good enough to invite others into our life who will inturn accept us whether they fully understand us or not.
Without this, I would never have figured that out, and I think this is the most valuable lesson I have ever learned about life, about people about myself so thank you. It hasn't been easy to get here, but it will be invaluable for me and my life going forward.
I love you so much. I apologize for every choice I made that was not in your best interest but rather in mine. I apologize for not understanding this sooner and for not being the lover and friend that I should have been. Love is a selfless act and I thought that is what I was doing, but it wasn't. It was exactly the opposite. I am sorry love. I am a better person because of us and I thank you.
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