So, our Big 1-1 Anniversary is coming up. I know I beat it into the ground on this blog, but I think that's because (other than God) G is my constant. My only constant. I don't mean that in a codependent, off-my-rocker kind of way. I mean that as a LOST reference: when things are spinning out of control and it's about to hit the fan in a serious way, I have G.
I've often thought about how I should write about it on the blog. My 1.5 readers have intimate relationships with their loves and it's all been said before. Yet I feel this deep need to articulate my love with G somehow, even if only to myself. Our love is not comprised of overt demonstrations: We don't go to large dinners with friends, and then when the dessert arrives, G does not stand up nonchalantly, tap his wine glass, and make an endearing, out-of-the-blue toast to his dear wife whom he loves above all things. When he proposed to me, it was not showy or public or even romantic. But it was necessary. And it was just right.
These observations are not borne out of a comfortable settling as our relationship spans the years. Even in the beginning, when things were passionate and new and exciting and different - they were not fireworks and bombshells. This is more of a reflection of our personalities than of the love itself. We are not the fireworks kind of people. Which is to say that if G did ever stand up in that hypothetical restaurant and give the hypothetical toast, I would probably recoil in horror, wondering which dish gave him the food poisoning.
That's not to say G is not romantic. It is to say that it is his charm and his endearing qualities that show themselves in every-day ways that get my attention. These are not overt, showy, shiny things. They are more like the silver dollar you stumble onto in the parking lot. Or like reaching into your pocket for the $5 bill and discovering a $20. Those more subtle "oooooh!" moments.
I'm re-reading Wuthering Heights for like the 80th time. I keep telling G to read it because he and Heathcliff would be BFF's, but that's another story. And anyway, that's not exactly true. I think G would like H just fine, what with all the brooding on the moors and the general sarcasm and discontent and overall condescension towards people, but I think H would find G a bit too...positive. G is practically PollyAnna compared to H.
But I digress.
When I read this description of Catherine's love (actually, the difference in love) of her two main men, I thought it was a solid beginning, a taste, of how I would describe my love for G.
So here you go:
"I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of my creation if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath - a source of little visible delight, but necessary. I am Heathcliff - he's always, always in my mind - not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself - but as my own being..."
I wish I could write like that!
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