The Way You Love Me

The Way You Love Me

My baby had a very honest and heartful talk with me about the way I love people today.

This weekend was pretty tough for me – on friday I was being terrorized by a mouse that had decidedhe was going to hold dominion in my room. So I stood on a chair for the better part of the evening petrified. The next day? Earl came to the house with cleaning supplies and a cd of love songs dedicated to me and cleared out all the clutter in my room. He totally allowed me to stand aside and supervise knowing how scared I was. And I had the single most glorious night of sleep i’ve had in 3 weeks.

But then this morning, my dad, just like clockwork, fell ill and had a fever and was lethargic and not speaking and not responding and being generally inactive. Strangely, my mom was lobbying HARD to let him make it through the night and see if he’d recover. I called two of my friends who are doctors and they told me that we should have BEEN taken him to the hospital. My mom’s response? With a dismissive wave of her hand “Oh… That’s just doctors talking.”

*blink*

*blink blink*

We figured the only reason that we would go to St. John’s with him woyld have been to keep him close in the case mom would want to visit. But being that it’s not really possible for her to do that – let’s take him to a good hospital. So we managed to get him out of bed into some clothes and in the car to Lenox Hill.

Upon getting there and getting him into ER, he had a little “accident” which I thought the nurses would help him with, but I guess they didn’t because there were traces everywhere. I spoke to a nurse about it at one point and explained to her that I didn’t understand the hold up and if we have to be the ones to clean him let us know.

I would NEVER volunteer to be the one to do that…. Because I don’t love that way. My body doesn’t allow me to. Between my extra sensitive nose and my generally widespread fear of bugs, maggots and rodents – I seem to be able to only offer clean love. I’m not really willing to wipe a shitty ass in the name of love… Or crawl down into a mildewy infested basement because of love. The more I thought about it… The more I felt like a sociopath and completely incapable of truly loving someone the way I should.

And that’s when Earl, through his sleep- drunken 2 AM stupor explained that we all love differently and that’s what makes love so exciting and different. We complement each other – where he’s not afraid of bugs – he rather enjoys the feeling of protecting me. Where I am artful at being decisive and moving in definite direction, he says that in a lot of ways I pushed him to be a better man.

Although, i’m sure down the lin I may have to do some unthinkable things. I guess that’s the part of love that i’ll grow into.

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