I know nothing about you.

Your name, your voice, your mind, your favorite song, your favorite book, your gait, your touch, your dreams, your fears—I know none of it.

I don’t know where you are or how you got there, the ebbs and flows that swept you into the man you’ve become. I don’t know the ways you’ve been held and rejected, the pieces you’ve stitched and lost, the edges where you once stood complete, the details of you.

But I’ve taken the time to learn the details of me, to retrace the steps of a long lost someone I never thought I’d misplace.

Still recovering from storms unforeseen, from blurred pauses in their merciful eyes, I am doing my best to find her—to love her.

And for you, I think I should try.

You see, I’ve never loved someone the way I intend to love you. I’ve never made the leap into a strength I’d trust to catch me; I’ve only ever fallen, too weak to catch myself.

But I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. I only tell you this because it’s made me who I am—the woman who will do her best to love you, the woman who will try to let you love her.

And for you, I will try.

I will press on, walking through these days when the light burns low (though it burns nevertheless), hoping to unveil the love I long to give, though I know I can give nothing before I hold some for myself. And so I will continue. So I will try.

Maybe then you will see me, glowing with a depth all my own, reaching out in a way that only you could ever hear.

Or maybe you already hear me. Maybe you already know just how I need to be touched, how I long to be loved, but how I falter in its acceptance. And maybe you know the same fight, ever-nearing that sweet surrender to the only thing you fear and crave all at once.

For that reason, perhaps you are waiting—hoping, just as I am, that one day, we will both be ready.

I trust that you are, and I trust that you will be. I trust you.

I trust that I’ll keep doing my part—collecting what I’d like to reclaim, mending all the broken things—just as I trust you’ll do the same. And I trust that one day, we will do it together; because you and I both know that this road is unceasing, unforgiving in its ways.

I trust that when we’re ready, we will know.

I trust that by then, I will have made my tiny strides in surrender—in learning and letting love.

Because for you, I will learn.

For you, I will try.

Relephant:

Dating a Man, Not a Boy: What Grown-Up Love Looks Like.

Author: Sara Rodriguez

Editor: Renée Picard

Image: Demi-Brooke/Flickr / Deviant Art