a love letter:


And I *do* need you, and I hate myself for saying that, for feeling it.

You understand, because you think you don't want to *need* anything or anyone, either. You too want to cling to this ideal vision of yourself as a pure and strong pillar of human willpower, a person who could stand alone if all the world should crumble around her, a soul that needs only itself to sustain itself throughout eternity.

I won't give up on that ideal if you won't; it can only inspire each of us to become better and more complete within ourselves, if we let it. I don't want to become dependent on you, and I know you don't want to become dependent on me (even if I had the strength to sustain that, which I don't). Like the song says, I want us to carry each other. But, dammit, I *do* need you. I actually did think once that I could be complete without you, that I didn't need you to be everything I could or to feast fully on life like a beggar at a banquet - but I was lying to myself, and maybe it's a lie you're no stranger to either.

Heaven knows I tried to make that lie true. But I can't. There is only so much that I can or will ever be without you, and part of the reason I'm writing this is simply to finally make peace with that. I can't promise I have much to offer you; I'm not exactly the best fish in the proverbial ocean. But I *can* promise you this: if you are You - if you are, indeed, my soulmate - if you are the other half of everything I have ever hoped and dreamed and prayed and screamed and ached for, and if I am yours - then there is nothing within my power I would never do for you, and no depth to which I would not love you.

I can't promise you wealth, good looks, stability, strength - but I *can* promise you my passion, my life. I promise you someone for whom paradise would be holding your hand as we watch the sun rise, or watching the gentle swelling of your chest as you lay asleep - someone who would love you no less on our last day than on our first, holding your hand and looking into your eyes with no less devotion as an old man than as a young one - someone for whom every day would be something to give thanks to the Divine for, if I had you there to share it with.