In response, somewhere from within me, rises a now-familiar presence, offering me all the certainties I have always wished another person would say to me when I was troubled. This is what I find myself writing to myself on the page:

I'm here. I love you. I don't care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it- I will love you through that, as well. If you don't need the medication, I will love you, too. There's nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.

Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert

Walk down that lonesome road all by yourself
Don't turn your head back over your shoulder
And only stop to rest yourself when the silver moon
Is shining high above the trees

If I had stopped to listen once or twice
If I had closed my mouth and opened my eyes
If I had cooled my head and warmed my heart
I'd not be on this road tonight

Carry on
Never run feeling sorry for yourself
It doesn't save you from your troubled mind

That Lonesome Road - James Taylor

Save me.

I know what I deserve.

There's nothing I can do for you anymore. I can barely take care of myself yet I have another person that I need to embrace with my heart. So how can there be any room in my heart to spare you? You can blame me all you want, and hate me all you want. But still there's nothing I can do for you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

David and I met because he was performing in a play based on short stories I'd written. He was playing a character I had invented, which is somewhat telling. In desperate love, it's always like this, isn't it? In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding that they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.

Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert

"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson