Once upon a time I knew a woman who had the most singular
and splendid quality. She never judged me. Ever. She accepted everything about
me – good and bad – with equanimity, and took the whole of me for what I was
without question. And for that reason I could never shock, hurt or offend her.
If I said something really awful to her, as I did occasionally, she would
return my words with a reproving look, but she would never step back so much as
an inch. She gave me her total trust, which she could do only because she had
no expectations of me and so there was nothing to betray.
Eventually she told me that she loved me, just as she was
setting off on her travels. By then I already knew that I loved her, and had no
doubt that we belonged together. But it was the wrong place and the wrong time,
and so we parted with a mutual sense of the most oddly uplifting sorrow.
I’m in the mood for committing to this blog the fact that
she was, and remains, the wisest and most beautiful woman I have ever known.
Her qualities put mine in the shade and she showed me, for the first and only
time in my life, how to understand the nature of pure Romantic love.
It’s been a long time since she left and I expect to be dead
or in my dotage before she returns from her wandering, but that won’t be the
end.
4 comments:
How beautiful to have had that experience Jeff. You know for sure that rare quality exists.
Just remembering it fills me with a sense of wonderment, Mel. If I told the full story, nobody would believe me.
That's beautiful. I hope fate deals you a good hand and you two find each other again.
Although if that happens and you've changed so much that you two aren't right for each other, it might ruin the prior experience.
It won't; sometimes you just know. She's the only mystical story I have. She'll come back in her own time. She has things to do, you see, and all I have to do is not wait. Being cryptic, aren't I? But she's real enough.
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