ok, so this afternoon i have to take her to the airport. and tonight the divine and i will go home alone - and while i know that when that time comes, it will be very hard; something has me a little worried. i started feeling smothered a little this time - i'm not sure how to explain it and i wonder if i'm always going to feel this way. if it isn't possible for me to have a healthy relationship without feeling this way. i wonder if maybe i'm just not supposed to be in one b/c i'm supposed to be on my own - am i always going to feel this on some level? i know that i am stubbornly independent - one of the things that she loves most about me, ironically. she says that even at my most vulnerable, i have an independent streak that can and does come out at any given moment. and i know this to be true - and i think that it's a good thing, one of the few qualities about myself that i really like but what if it is a disadvantage as well.

it isn't as if i don't know that i love her; it isn't as if i don't know that i'm in love with her. she is such an amazing person - she has real depth and substance that strangely most people don't have; she is incredibly insightful, which i absolutely love about her; she analyzes emotions and behavior, especially her own, until she understands it - which again, most people don't do. these are rare qualities in a person and i'm amazed that i found them in someone. she is also the most patient person i have ever met - which, i think, is probably a requirement for anyone in a relationship with me. i'm not good at healthy communication but i am working on it - and she knows that and we work on it together. she told me once that she didn't mind having to open the door, as long as i promised to meet her in the room. we are both so conscious of wanting a healthy relationship together.

she knows what's important in life, she has the right priorities - or i guess i should say that we have similar priorities b/c i'm not sure there are 'right' ones per se - but she is good at keeping me grounded and i think i'm good for her in that way as well. she said that before she met me she had given up on having a 'family' and all that that entails and i'm amazed that anyone ever let her go and i'm even more amazed that i can give her those things and that i have found someone i actually want to share those things with.

so, after all that, what could possibly be the problem?! i can't quite put my finger on it; on why i feel this way or even exactly what it is i feel. i just know that i feel smothered - she is also extremely sensitive, i think to me more than anyone and there are moments when i feel completely responsible for how she feels, her mood or her mindset. i don't think that i am, it is just these momentary thoughts or feelings and suddenly, it feels like an added responsibility - i'm an attorney, a single mother, what i owe in student loans could buy a very nice house, etc. - and added responsibility i don't want. and yet, that really isn't it b/c i recognize the innacuracy in thinking or feeling that. maybe it's just that today is the day she is leaving again - and today is the day that she will be the saddest and when i can get past my own sadness in that - i can't fix hers. and i want to; i feel like i have to fix things for people when they tell me what's wrong - and this is the most wrong for us and i can't fix it.

or maybe i'm always going to feel a certain sense of this - b/c while i think to keep a relationship healthy, you have to maintain a degree of independent self, you have to give up some of that to a certain extent and that's where i have to adjust - that is what i can't get used to. what if i'm just not capable of it. i don't want her to leave today; there is a part of me that despises the airport right now and the plane i'm going to put her on - and there is a part of me that feels a slight sense of relief. i don't know how to reconcile that and i don't know what that means. what if i'm never supposed to be in a relationship and i'm destined to grow old alone. surely that can't be it - but i can't reconcile knowing that this is right with wanting all of my space back for a little while. or maybe it's just normal to feel this way; like it is part of the adjusting period and not a reflection of the quality of our relationship or of the 'rightness' of it.

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