Incomprehensible

It’s a feeling, one I’m not sure I could or should explain. I don’t think feelings are meant to be explained; they are sacred to the heart, not the tongue. Still, this feeling begs to be understood, articulated to its fullest extent and depth. I lack not the motivation, merely the ability. How could I put in words the symphony your eyes conduct when they meet mine? How could I make fathomable the sincerity of my love? I’ve spent all these years trying to make sense of what it is you inspire in me, but I’ve come to the desperate conclusion that there is no collection of words, musical notes, or any other human medium that could convey the beauty of this surety in my veins. 

This surety has existed, just as palpable and certain as cool rain upon warm skin, since I first encountered you. I’d lived the majority of my life in stuffy, ordinary order. Feelings came and went, as did people, without any profound impact on my being. I had my share of love and loss, the trajectory of my life glancing fairly harmlessly off that of others. I’m not foolish enough to say nothing and no one affected me, but as I write this I’m certain everything pales in comparison to your impact. 

And that’s certainly the word I’d use. The second your eyes met mine and your lips turned up in the polite smile you’d offer a stranger, I felt as if I’d been struck. We were never really strangers, though. My love was as strong that day as it needed to be to alter me completely, and it has only grown since. I learned what love is from you, and I learned there are several types. You encompassed them all.  Their titles sound foolish compared to what they represent, cliche and overused. But I've long since given up trying to articulate the uncommunicable.

There is love at first sight, shallower than the rest, but strong and enrapturing. This type is fleeting and able to fade, as the foundation is not built on soul. You made me believe in this kind. However, if one is lucky, love at first sight can grow into something more certain and lasting. This love, platonic love, is often used to describe relationships devoid of romantic feeling, and rightly so, but I think it fits into romance more than most would realize. You showed me this by being my truest friend. Our platonic love grew into the deepest type, true love. True love is knowing someone to the fullest extent one can know another person, and loving them still. To look past the most grotesque aspects of humanity is a luxury few relationships can afford. Shallower love splinters and breaks when it encounters imperfections, of which there are many in cursed humanity. True love does not ignore these, it accepts them and chooses to endure. True love is the closest humanity can come to God’s perfect, sacrificial, whole love.

I’d like to spend paragraphs discussing your perfection, but I don’t have any desire to lie, and I was never content to remain in the blissful blindness of love at first sight. You are human, just as any other, and perhaps your normalcy is what drew me to your soul. It is certainly not a lie that you are outwardly beautiful, even without the rose-colored bias of love. Many might say this is what began my initial attraction to you, but I know it was something deeper, something my naked eyes could never detect. 

After the first meeting, there was a blur of unimportant introductions and small talk, but it didn’t take long for me to see through to the masterpiece underneath. I think perhaps my favorite thing about you was that you allowed me to. I was never one for vulnerability, but you were a master, and I reveled in learning from you. I spent a great deal of my life in fear of others, their judgment and opinions the focal point of the anxiety that remained my close companion. But, there was never fear with you. Even when the familiar panic began to arise, one squeeze of your hand or a knowing smile was enough to ease it. You became my safe place, a well I could cast my deepest secrets and wishes into and draw up support from. 

Intimacy, of the intellectual kind, wasn’t something I had to actively seek; it came so naturally to us. We had an understanding accessible to very few in this world, I’m sure. Our conversations, though I can’t remember all their contents now, held depth and meaning from the very beginning. Silence was more comfortable than small talk, and I could bask in your mere presence contentedly and feel completely at home. You had a passion that would come alive when we stumbled upon certain topics, a fire sparking in your eyes. You strayed from unreasonable anger and always attempted first to understand someone, instead of giving in to reckless rage. Even when I deserved your unkindness, though I tried not to, you refused me, and your mercy was sweeter than simple, blind love.

I cherish that feeling of being completely adored, but I also adored loving you. I just wish I remembered anything else. 

I don’t know your name anymore. The details of our lives have begun to fade from the crevices of my decaying mind, memories slipping away silently without alerting me of their departure. I wish I’d had the sense to write them down. There are times I struggle to remember if we had children or where exactly it is that I met you. I weep at those moments, mourning a life I’m losing my grasp on. I’m not certain you’re still alive, or if you’re an apparition I access only in my dreams. But, still, there’s a certainty in my very core, undeniable despite the terminally confident declarations of doctors. I will not forget you. 

There’s not much now I’m sure of; even my own faculties betray me. But your love cannot. I wouldn’t have chosen this fate, this forgetfulness, but I can accept it all the same. It displays fully to me the steadfastness of this feeling you evoke. I’ll cling to it until I must let go of this feeble, fleeting sequence of lessons we call life. Maybe in the afterlife, I’ll find a way to express this, but for now I am comfortable knowing you understand me in a way I no longer can. It was a privilege to love you.