She Stayed

She stayed.

She read my blog. She knew my heart was hurting.

So she stayed.

Not forever. She still has a life waiting for her up in Colorado. There are things she needs to do, responsibilities she needs to handle, pieces of her life that can't simply be abandoned because we fell ridiculously, stupidly, completely in love with each other.

But she was supposed to leave yesterday.

And now she's leaving Saturday.

She stayed.

I don't know why those two words hit me as hard as they fucking do.

Actually, that's bullshit. I know exactly why: Because she saw that I was hurting, and she changed her plans because she wanted to give me a little more time with her.

That's it.

There wasn't some grand romantic gesture. No flowers. No elaborate declaration of love. She simply looked at what I needed, looked at what she could do, and made a choice.

She chose to stay.

And that makes my heart swell even more for this amazing woman who has chosen to spend her life with me.

That's actually how she says it, too.

She'll look me directly in the eyes and tell me, "I choose you."

She chooses me.

Fuck.

There's something incredibly powerful about those words.

Yes, she tells me she loves me too. Don't make this all fucking weird.

But I choose you lands differently.

Love is an emotion. It can be complicated and messy and occasionally completely fucking irrational. We don't always get much say in who we fall in love with.

Choosing someone is an action.

It's deliberate.

There have been plenty of people who wanted Dawna. People who pined for her. People who tried. People who imagined themselves standing where I am now.

She didn't choose them.

She chose me.

And I don't say that as some kind of victory lap. I didn't win Dawna. She's not a fucking trophy.

She chose me.

There's a difference.

I'm not used to being loved like this.

I'm certainly not used to someone caring this deeply about me.

My previous marriage was incredibly lopsided. I spent a lot of years giving pieces of myself away because that's what I thought you did when you loved someone. My last "relationship," if we're going to call it that, was an affair. By definition, the power dynamic was fucked from the beginning. My heart was never really part of the equation.

Then I spent years alone. Years where every decision affected exactly one person: Me.

If I was hurting, I dealt with it.

If I was lonely, I dealt with it.

If something needed to be done, I fucking did it.

You get good at that after a while.

Maybe too good.

You learn how to survive without needing anyone else, and eventually you start confusing that ability with not wanting anyone else.

Then someone comes along and sees your heart hurting.

And she stays.

What the fuck am I supposed to do with that?

I mean that sincerely.

I don't always know how to receive it.

I know how to love her. That part seems to come naturally. I know how to care about her. I know how to worry about her, support her, make her laugh, feed her oysters, and ride beside her.

But being on the receiving end of that kind of love?

I'm still figuring that shit out.

And I know you guys are probably getting tired of hearing about how fucking in love I am.

I get it.

The snide commentary and motorcycle content has been interrupted by an alarming amount of feelings lately.

Sorry not sorry.

Because something extraordinary is happening in my life, and I'm a writer. This is how I understand shit. I put words around it and poke at it until maybe I understand it a little better.

For most of my adult life, I don't think I really understood what a healthy love was supposed to feel like.

Maybe I wasn't ready for it.

Maybe I had to spend a couple of decades getting my shit together before I could recognize it.

Maybe I had to die a few times.

Maybe I had to lose things.

Maybe I had to learn who the fuck I was before I could really share that person with somebody else.

I don't know.

Maybe there isn't some grand fucking lesson buried in any of this.

What I do know is that I finally found love.

Or, perhaps more appropriately, love found me.

As I'm sitting here writing this, my fiancée just woke up.

My fiancée.

God, I love saying that. Well, truth be told, we call each other “wife” now, and I tend to use the two words interchangeably now.

Anyway, she woke up and then jokingly asked me, "Whose idea was it to change the bedroom around?"

If you’ve been following along, you know that it was hers, and you know that she was being sarcastic just now.

She rearranged the bedroom yesterday, transforming what had always been my bedroom into ours. And energetically, it’s amazing. The room is so much more inviting. And it has her signature on it now. Unfortunately though, in doing so, she apparently positioned herself directly in the firing line of the morning sun.

And Dawna is not a morning person.

At all.

Meanwhile, I consider anything after about five in the morning to be sleeping in, because apparently there's something deeply wrong with me.

So the morning sun blasted my decidedly non-morning-person fiancée in the face, waking her considerably earlier than she would have preferred.

She complained about it.

Rightfully.

Then she put on her robe, walked outside, and watched the sunrise.

And I watched her.

This woman who was supposed to be waking up in Colorado this morning.

This woman who rearranged our bedroom and then immediately discovered a significant design flaw.

This woman who looked at me and decided, for reasons I may never completely understand, that one. I choose that one.

And my heart swelled all over again.

So yes, dear reader. You're getting more fucking words about love today.

Probably tomorrow too.

Sorry not sorry.

She stayed.