I can feel it coming, like the sense of foreboding that I used to get before those panic attacks (?) that only happen at night, when I'm asleep. I can feel things start to get loose and wobbly at the joints, at the places where it all comes together to make a cohesive, workable life. I am afraid.

I tell myself that I'm stronger now, that I've survived for a year like this, that things are better than they were before. I'm lying to myself. The truth is that I'm tired, so tired. This year has worn me down, left me depleted and disheartened. It's an entire year of seeing that things are not ever going to really get better. Last year, I didn't know that. Last year, the pain was brighter but I was still strong within, fired by the memories of your kindness and of the light in your eyes, of your warm voice holding the sound of my name so gently in the air. Now there's only desolation, exhaustion, no hope. Last year, there were people who could help me. This year, my resources for help are not at all the same...they're tired of me, frustrated that I still hurt.

A week and a half ago, I would have said that whether or not the person you love feels the same way, still there is purpose and meaning and fulfillment in that love, that it can still give life meaning, that one can still draw strength from it.

Now I am reeling, tottering off kilter. They say it's wrong for me to feel this way. It makes them uncomfortable, makes you uncomfortable, it's shameful and old and I should throw the thought of you away as though you were rubbish in my mind....but you never will be and I cannot help this.

They are not artists and they do not, cannot understand that the beautiful color of you infuses and breathes life into everything I think, see, do or create. They don't understand that you are my muse and would surely be horrified if they did. All they can see is the concept of possession. I cannot understand this anymore than I can understand wanting to live in a dark basement because one cannot possess the sunshine. Would anyone scold such a prisoner for missing the daylight or for wanting to paint a sun drenched landscape?

People cannot be possessed. Perhaps they think so, but I know...it is not so and that love which is about possession, not appreciation for the qualities of what is loved....isn't love at all. It's just greed. If something has to be owned to be loved, then it isn't loved whether it's owned or not.

Never mind. They're wrong. Why should I implode because someone else is small minded and criticizes what they don't understand? Forget it. I will survive in spite of them.