Originally written on New Year’s Day, this post led to my writing of “When love is like a Netflix subscription,” after my partner explained that it was not a portion of his love that I was receiving, but his time. I’ve chosen to post this now in response to a comment from a reader who wanted to know how I know that I’m loved without “proof.”
I just saw someone comment on his lover’s post about their new-found love. “And you wonder why I love you?”
And I answered the question as though you’d asked it.
No.
I don’t wonder. I know why.
That’s why I’m overcome with emotions since last night. Why I couldn’t hold it together when you were releasing me from the rope.
Why the words “I’m yours” come out stronger every time.
I know why you love me. It’s because you know me.
And that’s where the downfall always is, isn’t it? The pride? My pride? In knowing that I am worth your love. In knowing that I am capable of accepting and returning that love.
In knowing that you’re worth my love.
I won’t talk of the past. Of how they handled it. Of the reasons why it’s always fallen in the past.
You’re not them. You’re not the past. You are my present.
And as of right now, we’re both working on keeping it that way.
You said last night that I have you.
That I’m yours, and I have you.
My rational brain kicks in – the one that tries to find words that are more precise, and it tells me that I share you.
More precisely, it reminds me that I share you. Even typing that makes me chuckle. That’s part of my fear – the fear that brought me to tears – of losing you.
But my emotional brain kicks back in and I also feel that the piece of you I have is whole. That this…love….this relationship that is between you and me and nobody else – that is not shared.
And I ask myself if I can remain satisfied with 100% of a piece of you?
It frightens me to say that I can as much as it frightens me to think that I can’t.
You are my present, and in this present you are my love. Today is an arbitrary day that humanity has chosen to symbolize new beginnings. The dawn of a new year. One day out of billions that this rock has been in orbit around that star.
And on this one in a billion moment when an arbitrary product of billions of years of evolution picked to be the start of just one of another billion years to come…
You chose to be with me.
And you wonder why I love you?
My love, I hope the answer to that question is “no.”
polyammering 