SamadhiMuse

                                                  18 Mar 1986
      Dear Joan,
           I've lost track of how many letters I've begun to you and
      then abandoned.  Not because what I had to say wasn't pressing
      but more because my courage has faltered to say so much; to
      admit I feel all this.  Love calls.  Should I pick up the
      phone?  Everything says yes, but my willingness to risk and
      feel so much.  It holds me.
           I wrote somethings about you after we hung up tonight.
      Trying to clear my thinking about how fast my feelings are
      moving with you and what I think of you and what I want:
                        Joan is
                        quality
                        sincerity
                        a beautiful spirit
                        intellectual
                        a friend
                        a lover
                        honest
                        compassionate
                        straightforward
                        secure
                        centered
                        not egotistical
                        not judgemental
                        healthy
                        physical
                        coordinated
                        unburdened by her past
                        flexible with her future
                        pretty
                        spiritual
                        idealistic
                        open minded
                        non-materialistic
           The list could probably go on but this is enough.  I'm in
      awe that such a person could care for me.  That God should have
      shined such grace on me.  It makes my eyes water to say such
      things and I'm sure it will when I say them in person.
           Joan, for all the things I've done there's one I've not.
      I've never chosen to give myself wholeheartedly to loving
      someone.  Rose and I married for conveience and rebellion and
      discovered soon after that more was required and spent most of
      our lives trying to patch our folly.  And Lise and I loved for
      passion and sophistication and ultimately we came to respect
      each other but it never quickened to commitment.  It hung
      suspended on doubts and differences and compromises until it
      died.  No one else has been important.  Perhaps Lise is only
      important because she is recent and because, by dropping me,
      she woke me up from my long compromise dream.
           I look at the list on the first page and at my feelings.
      I remember your face and your smile.  And I wonder what I can
      be thinking of.  I must be asleep in the midst of God's grace
      that you should care for me and I hesitate.  That I should
      think that anything might be more important.  Because, my love,
      nothing is.  Nothing.
           I'm done with watching for reservations.  With being
      cautious and reasonable about you.
           I want you, Joan, and I love you.  My feelings have been a
      growing storm these last weeks.  Some people might say
      "infatuation".  But I look at the list I wrote and I see you're
      everything I want.  The love's grown so fast because you are
      exactly who and what I want.
           That you are here now, looking at me, caring for me is
      nothing short of a gift of God.  A gift of a lifetime.  I can
      only hope you share some of my feelings and that I will not
      scare you with this letter.
           So what, exactly, am I saying?  That I love you and I'm
      done being cautious about it, of trying to reason out how it
      will fit into my life and plans.  My life and plans will have
      to fit into my love.  I don't want to see anyone else but you.
      I have no reservations about that or you.  So, what else can I
      say.  That all this is unilateral.  These are my feelings, my
      love, and my wish to make some commitments with you.  If you
      feel the same then ... then what could I say?  Words couldn't
      hold the feelings.  But you'll know.  And if this is not what
      you want then that will have to be OK too.  I'd be a fool to
      see you in my life as you are now and not say these things.
      And I would far rather risk than loose you from caution.
           Your dreams are not so far from mine.  I've fantascized
      all my life about loving someone and working together on things
      that were meaningful to both of us.  I always thought it was
      just a fantasy until I met you.  I begin to see things in your
      eyes.  Of what could be between us.  And of what we could do
      together.  We're free of what ties most people down and we both
      feel spiritual and idealistic leanings that can open up lives
      of inner and outer richness limited only by our imaginations.
                              Until I see you Thursday,
                                    Love,
      - Letter to Joan, 18 Mar 86

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —