She Can’t “Be Mine”
It's 60 degrees in Dallas, but most days feel like winter. Words are also harder to find. In my journal I’ve got scribbles. I’ve got fragments. —Just like how I feel: garbled and fragmented.
And now Valentine’s Day is here.
Gretchen absolutely without hesitation loved Valentine's Day. It was her excuse every year to go out of her way to show our daughters how much they were loved. To celebrate our family’s love for one another.
Valentine’s Day at the Naugle’s became a family-rated version of Ladies’ Night.
For myself, I never fully learned to embrace Valentine’s Day. It always felt too commercially contrived. But here I am staring down one of Gretchen’s favorite days of the year, and I wish so badly I could buy her overpriced flowers, chocolates, and take her out for a night on the town.
So looking this week, staring at my scribbles it finally clicked.
She can’t be mine, and I can’t be hers. I now welcome each morning with the unrelenting ache of missing being loved by Gretchen.
Permit me to scatter my scribbles.
Missing Love
I miss Love
I miss Love looking at me
Love seeing me
Love who knows me truer than I know myself
I miss Love
To be present with Love
To be entrusted with Love
To take risks with Love
To laugh with Love
To journey with Love
To move fluently through life with Love
I miss Love
Her energy
Her support
Her safety
Her commitment
Her trust
Her back and forth
Her desire
Her intimacy
Her story
I miss Love
Love’s connection lost
All of me, in an endless loop attempting
Connection lost
My heart keeps trying to connect
To Love
I don’t want my heart in airplane mode
I can’t forget the way Love looked back at me.
