Do I Love My Wife?

Through the years I have often speculated to myself about whether or not I actually loved my wife. Others have done this too, but my speculation showed itself in angry remarks and hostile actions. I turned silence into a weapon that clouded the minds of all who were in my presence and forced themselves to pose their own line of speculation - about my level of mental wellness.

My speculation has taken the equivalent of years. Hours and hours and hours in the car, muttering to myself on voice recordings I thought were useful and noteworthy somehow, but never listened to. I spent hours and hours more escaping into movies and porn and my own imagination and useless conversations with people who were just being polite. These people never picked up on the invitation to continue those conversations. Moreover, was an additional mountain of hours woven throughout the days and nights, for weeks and weeks on end. These hours were devoted to the heavy yoke of depression that prevented me from being professional, social and in all other ways productive. All these hours were somehow necessary, however, to detangle the muddled mess of the poor logic I've adopted through the years. Like lines and lines of software code contradicting one another and in total were designed to do the opposite of fulfill one's mission: to live life.

So that is why I say that I have spent the equivalent of years in speculation. And, after all that time, I have the answer.

Of course I love my wife. I love her not for what she does or how she acts or what she says, but who she is. I love her because she is the living embodiment of all that is beautiful. And, like anything that is beautiful to us humans, she is full of flaws and mistakes and pain. She is also full of tenderness that presents its own paradox, because it has required such strength and perseverance to maintain. She is full of sunrises and what's next and what could or will be. She is full of vulnerability, reminding anyone who's near that she is approachable, that she will listen, that she cares. She is full of smiles, not because she is only and always happy, but because she seems to bring that out in others. I've seen that again and again.

She may never like me or love me again, but I now know that I love her. I know it like waking from a fever. I know it like I know my name.

I also know that writing these words has value only to me, for they are only words in the minds of others. They do not undo the vivid images of my anger, or the awful feelings that I've triggered in others. Perhaps now, after all these hours and hours, I can be freer to demonstrate the compassionate and thoughtful regard for my wife that I promised her on our wedding day.

My sincere hope is that years and years from now, the impact of this seemingly ages-long fever will be lost to much better times defined by true love.