Coming to the end of love

Clouds cover the sky above Manhattan today. Wisps of snow cling to the ledges of the armory across the street. On the iron bars of the fire escape obscuring my view, mourning doves announce the end of love.

I have known end of love before. Each time it takes a different form. I've known the end of love to leave me petrified, exposed, naked and raw, so that the very touch of air on my skin sears like a white-hot flame. I've known the end of love to leave me energized, hopeful and excited for the possibility of something greater and more fulfilling. I've known the end of love to leave me broken, hurt, grateful and stronger, but not until today have I known an end of love in which so much love remains.

One year ago, we planned a wedding. We rhapsodized about what we could achieve together. He spoke to my soul, and I to his. We were like long-ago friends who found one another again, even though we'd just met. We shared powerful premonitions about our future, and we walked into that future with every intention of living our shared vision. I never felt that way before. I'd never met someone with whom I shared a memory of something yet to be, something that would not be simple, but that would lead to powerful revelations of soul. We came to this love knowing its life would be short, but intense. It was a love born of itself that embraced the two of us, insisting to be. We could no more deny it than we could pull down the sky.

The clouds are breaking up now. The shadows of racing pigeons streak across the sunlight on my desk. I may not have noticed them yesterday, but today, I see everything. I see that every brick in the armory is a different color of red. I see the skeletons of street trees reaching up canyon walls of mortar and steel, and how their branches look like lace on stiff, dark, fabric. I see a thousand purple-rimmed eyes, welling with tears, that yesterday were just windows, and I hear the call of mourning doves, although there are none to be seen. Were it not for the doves, I would not be certain, but they come each time love ends. They sing at the window a song that goes directly to my heart. "Move. Move. Move," they say.

Love brings a gift each time it enters our lives. It shows us part of ourselves we may have never seen without it. This, my beloved has done for me, yet in doing so, he showed me I cannot remain in this love. I cannot give up the piece of myself his love unconsciously demands, a piece of myself I'd never seen until it was in danger of oblivion. His love demanded a separation of my sexuality and my humanity, a separation I've lived with since I was a little girl, too-soon introduced to sex. This love was a precipice of choice, of healing or remaining forever fractured. I have chosen to heal, and thus I have chosen the end of love.

The Tao teaches that all things exist in paradox, and the paradox of this end to love is that I feel an even greater love for us both. This new love does not expect to follow a pattern of marriage and family. This new love does not have conditions, already forgives everything, and while it is not the kind of love we envisioned, it is the kind of love which has no end.

Monday, January 18, 1999

Copyright 2010 by Deborah McAdams. All Rights Reserved. For Reprint Rights, click here.