Poem #533

Did I choose to love you? I doubt I could have chosen not to. Having committed to the larger, loving you, I fulfilled that with the smaller, trusting you. I believe it is more necessary to love than to be loved.

You betrayed me in every way and sense of that word and deed and yet I continued to love you and in so doing felt obliged to go on trusting you so as not to separate love and trust and in so doing, lose the love. I was unable to separate the two and so became divided from myself.
Because I needed to love you, someone who would accept my love, it was less important that you love me as long as you accepted my love for you.

Now we both know that you didn’t do even that, while before only you had that knowledge. As long as I manufactured the love, you were protected under the umbrella of my trust.

We believe what we want to believe as long as we don’t too baldly defy physics. However, in matters of religion- an aside- every fact can be denied. Perhaps love is a religion like any other addiction. It took me years afterward to find life a more comfortable fit.

August 26th, 2011 was our first anniversary. As always we were broke. I asked you what you wanted. You asked me to write you a poem. I did. It is #533 in Volume One. I include it (again) below in its entirety.

This Is a Poem.
It didn’t exist before this moment
at any time before
anywhere in all of space.
It is a poem for you
who did not ever exist
in all of time and space
until you became uniquely what you are
from all that has ever been.
You are inevitable;
you had to happen.
There was no other way;
there is no other you.
The universe could not possibly be what it is
unless you are in it.
You are not incident in an accidental universe.
Knowing you is not, for me, an accident.
Loving you is the natural unfolding,
the consequence of knowing you,
of the steps our meeting took forward.
I do not know what lies ahead
any more than I knew in the past
what now would be for us.
There are consequences for all things,
including love.
One of them is pain,
despite all its pleasures and rewards.
Sometimes that pain simply follows love
as death replaces life.
Sometimes it’s just mixed in like PB&J in the jar of life.

I was
and am
open to loving you
and being loved by you.
That loving is precious
and valuable.
It is clearly what I will miss the most and mourn
in the process of letting go of life.

This is just a poem,
words,
a thank you note
for saying “I do” to all those touching things
that added up to so much in my life
and heart and soul
and letting me say them as well to you
with no regrets ever,
only love and gratitude.
Happy Anniversary,
Love, Jack.

(Addendum:
10/9/11: She posted this poem to her, verbatim, to a boyfriend on Facebook, presenting it as her own work:
He wrote: “You’re cheating. You didn’t write that. You can’t spell that well.”
She wrote: “I did . I used some words from Jack and the rest I kept moving about till it made something, so ha!!!!!! rude boy.”
He wrote: “I’m sorry. Relax. lol”
Without warning, she left me on 10/26/11.)