āI have never been one of those peopleāI know you arenāt, eitherāwho feels that the love one has for a child is somehow a superior love, one more meaningful, more significant, and grander than any other. I didnāt feel that before Jacob, and I didnāt feel that after. But it is a singular love, because it is a love whose foundation is not physical attraction, or pleasure, or intellect, but fear. You have never known fear until you have a child, and maybe that is what tricks us into thinking that it is more magnificent, because the fear itself is more magnificent. Every day, your first thought is not āI love himā but āHow is he?ā The world, overnight, rearranges itself into an obstacle course of terrors. I would hold him in my arms and wait to cross the street and would think how absurd it was that my child, that any child, could expect to survive this life. It seemed as improbable as the survival of one of those late-spring butterfliesāyou know, those little white onesāI sometimes saw wobbling through the air, always just millimeters away from smacking itself against a windshield.ā ā Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life
On our second date you told me something I had not expected. I had many expectations of you, nice ones. Ironically when I realized that you could be a completely different person, I started caring more about you. I had to. How could I not.
The emotions I felt toward you were complicated. I tried putting them into words a few times but couldnāt figure it out. The first time I encountered something physical I could empathize with was a quote I read in a book. It was a quote not about a romantic relationship but about the love a parent feels for oneās child. And I read it over and over in awe of how much it seemed to put into words something I felt yet couldnāt express.
I loved you. And I still do. And I think itās a kind of love that would go on for the rest of my life. I used to be suicidal. I used to hate myself. And so were you while I was with you. You loved me but never seemed to believe I could understand you. But I did. I had wished my whole life I didnāt. But maybe all that ugly pain and suffering I erased out of my mind became the most valuable thing I had because it helped me understand you. As fucked up as it sounds itās the pain that made me love you the most. The pain I know so well, the pain that I was built on, the pain I refused to be mine, the pain that seemed to form every single cell of my body at one point and still do.
So I was in fear. And I still am. It was so many different types of fears; ones I knew, ones I didnāt, ones I wished I didnāt know. I feared that I would not love you enough. I feared I would never be able to save you from your pain. I feared that I would see you as someone who needed constant help instead of someone I simply love. I feared doing something you did not like during sex. I feared I would ignore the slight hints that you give for my own pleasure. I feared that you would never realize how beautiful you are. Only if you knew how beautiful you are. If there is one thing I learned from computer science it is to break down a big problem into smaller ones. My approach was to think of what I would tell myself years ago if I had the chance. I feared I did not know the answer. I feared having to revisit parts of myself I have erased, not by just simply erasing it but replaying it over and over in my head, except each version slightly less painful than the other so that the version I remember in the end would seem much better than what it actually was. I feared I would never find how to give you pure happiness. I feared you would never love yourself. I feared you would be gone somewhere never to talk again with me with the idea that you disappearing out of my life would be a good choice, as if you are some stain on a shirt I have. I feared so many things that I was not sure if I was in love or I was in fear. And this went on after we broke up. The first thing that came to my mind every morning was fear that you would have done something bad to yourself. Missing you was the next part.
I do not know if it is ideal for romantic love to be so dominated by fear. Fear makes relationships deeper but also much harder. But the series of fears are what make me love you so much. It feels like my whole hormonal system changes when I am with you. I am no longer the smart and confident engineer with composure but a soldier crossing a war zone filled with mines.
I love how the people I love know how lovely they are. People would give you nice things too, not because they are trying to be nice people but it just makes them happy since you are an easily lovable person. But you couldnāt see yourself this way. The very absence of what I loved about so many of my beloved made me care about you more. It made me love you more. It made me fear more, not you, but of something; something that I felt but didnāt know where and how to place.
I sometimes wish that I met you in some other way. Not as romantic lovers in 20s who could break up so easily but in a relationship where we are trapped together forever. If there is a relationship where it is normal for one side to keep just giving things forever without any social expectations of returns, I want it. Nice things happen to good people and I wanted to saturate you with good things until you become this arrogant douchebag who does not know how to thank people. And I still wish so.