Because He Loved Me

We were so young. The world was our oyster, and we believed that everything was possible. We would right all the wrongs and create a new and better reality that was kind and gentle. Something that welcomed diversity and celebrated difference. A rainbow world in which the sunshine would fall on everyone, and no one would be left behind.

We were so young, and we believed that love was enough and that we could change the world.

It didn’t work out that way, of course.

The boy I fell in love with—the one who believed that I could hang the moon if I wanted to—was fighting a battle I would only come to understand much later. He loved me—never stopped. But I was his aberration. And my knowing this was a corrosive thing in our relationship. I was not mature enough to be willing to share.

I pushed the only man who never stopped loving me away. But he refused to be kicked to the curb. He insisted on building a new family with me. And even in my immaturity and jealousy, I could see the brilliance of his approach to the world. Enfold—don’t exclude. Once in the fold, you always have a place if you want one.

He taught me what real love looked like...

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So tonight, I sit in an apartment in Manhattan, with his amazing husband, his incredible former partner of 20 years, and his beautiful biological family, and I weep for the man who lies in the next room. He is a skeleton of his former self. The cancer is burning away all the chaff, until only the truest part of him is left. He is love. That’s it. That’s the whole story.

He is love, and he made me who I am. He gave me this family who surrounds me in this terrible, beautiful moment. He whispers that he loves me as his body fails and his singular, breathtakingly lovely soul begins to shine bright.

He is—and always has been—love. And I am who I am because he loved me.