A Love Most Don't Understand

I love my husband in a way that most will never understand.  It's not to say that they will never know love, or even true love, but most people believe that you love someone who loves you back.  You wake up one day and meet someone who is perfect to you.  You laugh, you fall in love and you never look back.  But I love my husband in a way that most will never understand, because he can't love me back.

I do not wake up everyday in the arms of someone who loves me.  I do not get to look back at my marriage and laugh at the good times and think of how they outweigh the bad.  Our good times were so short.  We had so little time for me to have those days.  And now I live for moments that would seem fleeting to outsiders.  I live for days when he talks to me voluntarily.  I live for the moments when he laughs an honest to goodness laugh that isn't forced or fake or hollow.

Most will never understand what it is like to love someone who doesn't love you back.  Not because they have never felt unrequited love, but because they have never married someone who loved them once, but came home one day and no longer did. We did not fall out of love, I did not love a man who didn't know I existed, but rather, the person who used to love me is bound in chains, suffocated by himself.

And he is angry at me.  He is angry that I don't leave.  He is angry that I love him anyway.  He is angry that I am sometimes weak, but more angry that most of the time I am strong.  He is angry that I love him and tries everyday to get me to stop.

Most will never know the pain of loving someone, who used to love you, who wants to love you again, but who can't.  Most do not understand why I keep loving him.  Most do not understand why I would hang onto the love I have for someone who hasn't loved me back in years.  But instead of my love being reciprocated, I have a love that is hopeful and faithful.  I do not love because he loves me too, I love because he doesn't.

I love him because he deserve to be loved and he needs to wake up everyday, angry or not and know that someone does.  And he will continue to punish me for loving him and I will continue to love him anyway because he needs to learn that not loving himself will not stop me.