Self-Confidence

I guess that I wish we could still be friends.

I understand her point, that a relationship can't have two people with mental illness.  I understand how rough it can be to be around me, when everything is constantly on the edge of slipping into a chronic, painful madness.  I am, to put it bluntly, a depressing person to be around.

What I wish I could give her, or explain to her, is the fact that I actually have a deep faith in myself.  I know that I will continue to struggle with my problems, but I refuse to give up.  It's a powerful force in my life.  It has kept me alive despite everything that has happened, or will happen, to me.

It's a strange confidence, but a sustaining one.  And - I know that I myself need a partner who can also have that faith in me.  It's a tall order.

But a necessary one.

I suddenly feel OK.

Of course the answer was right there all along, staring me in the face.

"For God so loved the world that He gave." (John, 3:16).

And I don't mean this in a boring Christian episcopal, evangelical way.  John is describing an action, a course of action, for all of us to perform.

"For God so loved the world that He gave."

Almost one year ago, I made this promise.  I promised that no matter who or how I was, I would give as my expression of love.  I would be, for her, the ultimate expression of love.  For almost a year, that has been as a lover; and I have made a decidedly poor show of it.  But now is the opportunity to do it as a former lover, as an ex.  I am called upon to be selfless and pure without reward, to love for love's own sake.  And by God, I shall do it.

It is a time of endings.  She has left me and she has left me and she has left me.  I have no future now, nothing to look forward to.  Desolation and exhaustion are what I feel.  But also a curious kind of peace.  Something bigger, something larger is screeching to a halt.

I don't know what it is.  Me, I suppose.