Longing: Safer than Losing
Longing for it feels safer than losing it.
There is no loss in longing, the bitterness of lack tempers the bliss of fantasy.
But can you bear to taste only sweetness, knowing bitterness can come for you at any moment, full force, untempered by sweetness?
Can you bear to have something you're sure it would break you to lose? Something you are sure to lose?
No.
Better to break piece by piece in yearning for it, crumbling to avoid the total obliteration.
My love, these are not thoughts, these are tensions in the animal body.
The starving creature—that has probably never experienced the full relational nourishment of the village our nervous systems were designed to have at our backs—much more comfortable alert to threat than feasting with its back to the room.
Add to that the actual obliterating grief that is the fairytale ending of every successful marriage—the death of a partner.
The animal is right to panic. Guaranteed doom.
There it is; that is the fullness of your unsafety in partnership.
No partnership is safe. When you fear, fear this. When you want to return to love, grieve this.
When you're willing to face it, full-on,
you'll commit to tasting the sweetness of every moment.
