To My Beloved

So, we are different, you and I.  That I know.  After over a decade together, after seeing the children through the tough early years, the promises we promised not to make but secretly hoped the other would keep without uttering - I know now.  We are different and separate.  You do not complete me.  I do not complete you either.  You never could and neither could I you.  No one completes anyone.  One can only strive for one's own completeness, completion and beyond.  The only hope, your own self.  There's nothing more than that.

Is this desperation?  Far from it, I hope.  I love you.  More than I knew I could, I think.

I am a crazy bastard, I know.  I get mad at you, I lecture you, I try to guide you and I sometimes impose my authoritative opinion over you.  I am sometimes possibly even downright rude to you.  And you get mad.  And you are right to be mad at my disgusting tactics.  And then you sometimes agree.  And sometimes I am triumphant that you did, and sometimes I am mad because you should have got there on your own.  I am a curse to be with, I know.

And none of what good it may bring you makes me right.  None of it makes doing all these nasty things right.  And yet it still does not mean I don't love you.  Because I do.  Because we are different and yet I want you.  Not just in the carnal sense though that is nice, too.  But because I want you to be happy.  No, not in a limited, controlled way that would please me.  Cast me away after you are done with me, for all I care.

I want you to be complete on your own.  Strong, independent, powerful and capable to deal with every challenge you face on your own.  Able to expand upon that quantity we self-deceptively think is limited and call the "I".  To seek your ultimate breadth, to find the passion that ignites you from within and lets you burst through the muddle of life with fire, with purpose and obstinate but mindful determination.  I want you to reach sublimely above yourself and feel the fervent tremors of knowing you can.  Barely, maybe, and possibly doomed to failure but to just feel, if even for brief moments, the dizzying ecstasy of being something beyond your wildest dreams.  To feel that you are truly, madly, deeply alive.  I want that for you.  If I could only help you get there...

And we are different.  And you probably don't even want that.  And you probably don't even care that I want that for you.  And you are right not to.  You are probably comfortable and safe where you are, under your cozy blanket, safe from the big, mean Universe out there.  But that won't stop me.  I am rude that way.  I can care less about your fears, about what you think may be nice and comfy.  I am a bastard that way.

Because I want you to be free.  I know nothing better in life, I could treasure nothing more.  Even my own life I could care less.  It is the best I know.  So I want you to have it.