what then?

What do you do if the person you love, the person you pledge your soul to morphs physically and emotionally at the hands of a disease like cancer or dementia or even addiction? Does love cover all bases? Are we expected to stick around when life shows up, reality reads like a horror story, and smiles are caught for instants, like butterflies in the wind.

It is important, at least for me, to believe in that perfect, mindblowing love. It might take years and labyrinths to find it, but once the puzzle pieces click together, nothing else in the world really matters. Your minds are in sync as you finish each other’s sentences, your skin responds like lightning to one another’s touch, your bodies provide warmth, arousal, safety. You whisper to each other in the quiet of the night, mumbling words like “love” and “you” and “forever” against each other’s skin.

When you walk together in the light of day, your hands seek each other out. Your proximity decreases to the point where you begin to nearly walk as one.

When you are separated, whether it be between walls or continents, you feel disconnected, not just from your lover but from yourself. When you define yourself by your love for another, when that love is gone, even for a moment, it changes you. You struggle with every step, every  breath.

Is love worth sticking around for when it becomes unrecognizable? When the love that looked so bright and alive, skin olive against the emerald of the grass becomes starchy, like the color of the sheets it rests against, what about then? When the breath that provided loud and hearty laughs and kisses that seem to last for days suddenly can barely sustain, coming out labored and shallow, what then? When your lover can barely see you, barely recognize you, when you see just fleeting pieces of who they were, what then?

When they are begging you to carry them, but you have lost the lover to carry your own weight, what then?