An Awful Lot to Love

" Love is Being Stupid Together"

http://www.flickr.com/nattu

So I'm sure by now someone reading will be starting to ask why I stay. I mean, I'm no dummy, I know that drinking and lies don't usually make for successful relationships. So I want to explain, because the wonderful things about this man I fell in love with so far outnumber the two that we struggle with.
My Dad was a very special guy. He was charismatic and smart and he knew all sorts of stuff about all kinds of things. He did the New York Times Crossword puzzle every morning in pen, and for all of my life told me that I was the smartest, most beautiful daughter in the world, that I could do anything that I wanted to with brains like mine. He was kind and gentle and soft-spoken and generous. He was opinionated and confident and not afraid of handing out advice, most of which was really good. For the twenty eight years I was lucky enough to have him, he was my rock. He was also one of the biggest liars I have ever met.
That said, this lying thing with B has turned out to be a tricky thing for me. I know it is possible for a man to be a wonderful father and a loving person, while also being capable of great dishonesty. My father's lies were not small ones. He wrecked my car and told me he didn't do it. He cheated on my mother and lied to me when I caught him. He was bad with money and lied to cover that up. Still, they never colored the way I looked at him. I knew that despite his dishonesty he was still the most reliable person in my world. He was always the one who loved and supported me most, kept me the safest, was the person I could count on above all others.
Now B. Where do I start to show you who he really is? I fell in love with him years ago--twenty years--back in junior high school. Then he was a brilliant, socially awkward, extremely gentle, young boy. When I was fourteen he pulled me behind the bush in my parent's front yard and kissed me quickly--half on the mouth, half quick lips brushing against my cheek. It was the first time I had ever been kissed, and clumsiness aside, it rocked my world. When he broke up with me a few years later it broke my heart. That first relationship colored the way I handled all of my relationships after that. I moved on and dated others, got married, had babies, but I never got over the ache of that first love. After B, I chose men who weren't as smart as me, men who were less likely to walk away because I was so often far out of their league.
Just this past June I was tinkering around on facebook, keeping up with my young nieces and my daughter and step-son, reconnecting with some old friends from high school when I searched B's name on a whim. I found him and his younger sister and messaged them both in an attempt to get back in touch. My divorce had been final for more than three years. I had even tried dating other women for a while, all with little effect on my happiness and with no luck finding someone compatible with my eccentricities. Then I waited. Maybe two weeks later my inbox held a quick message from him and it was like someone hit the reset button on my life. We messaged and talked and took walks and spent hours filling in twenty years worth of absence. The first time he reached an arm around me to give me a hug, I realized what I had been missing for so long.
B has spent the last several years taking care of his elderly grandmother. She is ninety-five and suffers from advanced Alzheimer's disease. He goes daily to her house to help his mother with her care so that she can stay in familiar surroundings. For years now he has gone there every morning and night to lift her in and out of bed and complete household chores for her. He spends a majority of his nights there doing laundry and sleeping on her couch, ever alert to the sounds from the baby monitor that might indicate her discomfort or any danger of falling. He talks to her and makes sure she is as happy as she can be. He makes sure that every day she is still well loved. Men like this do not come along every day.
So I'm trying my best to see past the lying, to get through the drinking, one day at a time, because this man is my other half. He is the only other person I know who likes to lie in bed at night and read random shit on the internet, things both silly and serious. We laugh at each others jokes--all the ones no one else gets. We both fight off the depression by immersing ourselves in learning about anything-- about everything. When I snuggle up against him at night, and lay my head on his shoulder, with my hand resting in the nest of black curls on his chest, I am so perfectly at home and content that I cannot imagine any reason not to love him. When I bury my nose in his neck when he hugs me it smells like heaven, and when he holds me in his arms, with his hand cupping the side of my face, he makes me feel like the only women in world. His voice is always soft when he talks to me-- even when he's angry, even when he's been drinking. He gives me ample credit for being smart and capable and good at things that he is unable to do himself. He tells me that he loves me and that I give him hope that the future still exists, that marriage is worthwhile, that there are still dreams left for him to dream. He says that those are things he had long given up on.
One of the things I love the most is seeing his face aged to match my own, glimpses of our youth peering out from behind the fine lines etched into our faces by experience and longing. I now look forward to growing old alongside him when a few years ago I was fighting aging with all that I had. I am nearly anxious to watch the gray scatter through his dark hair even as his hairline slides back a fraction of an inch every year. God how I loved him then, how much more I love him now. There really has never been another for me; I know that I married, dated, slept with more men than I care to admit, but there was never anyone like him, no one to grab my heart and hold onto it the way he did when we were both fourteen, no one else ever able to comfort and calm me with just a touch, a featherlite kiss on my forehead.
I love his hands. I look at them, fingers intertwined with my own. They are strong enough to make me feel always safe and protected, yet his touch is always light and never rough. When I look at his hands I think--"These are hands that will never ever hurt me."

I find myself unable to see a future without him in it.
There simply must be a way through these problems.