Susan Piver

It seems that I committed to a lifetime of delight and sadness, inseparable from each other. Every time I look into my dear one’s eyes and feel how deeply we’re connected, the moment disappears before I can actually hold it; and I have to watch that happen. It’s excruciating. It’s much easier to do this with your thoughts when you’re meditating than with the feeling you get from his breath on your shoulder as you fall asleep. But now I get that I have to repeat this until the end of my life, and that somehow this is love’s road.

I wish I had known that when you live with someone for a long time, there is continuous, mind-blowing irritation. Often the irritation arises when you try to replace your actual partner with a projection, because they always figure out a way to tell you how unlike your projection they really are. Once you pick yourself up, that gives you yet another opportunity to choose between who this person is and who you sort of hoped he was. No matter how many times I prompt my husband with the correct lines for his role, he does not get into character. This irritates me. We have to throw the script and just begin to improvise. You’re playing you and I’m playing me. Go.

I didn’t really understand that love does not arise, abide, or dissolve in connection with any particular feeling. It has almost nothing to do with feeling. (Nor does it seem to be a gesture, a commitment to stay, becoming best friends, or anything else I might have thought.)