I want to tell you why I still love you despite and because of all we’ve been through together. P, I still remember smiling at you from across the commons at KPC. I still remember you carrying me out of the college when I lost the baby. I remember how sad I was, and how you made me feel so secure and so loved. I remember sitting in the yard by the bonfire on warm summer nights. I remember our silly geese and our one crazy duck. I remember you loving me through alcoholism and bipolar or manic depression or whatever they want to call it. I remember you helping me when I was on the wrong medication and I was hearing things. I remember you loving me through breast cancer. I remember you shaving your head for me. I will never forget that as long as I live. Baby, that meant more than you will ever know to me. I remember thinking and knowing in my heart…this is the man God meant for me…this man will love me forever…this man is strong and good and really loves me. This man will help me. This man will stand by me until I am well and he will be my partner. He sees the good in me and he will stay until I become the person that I am meant to be. I believe that you really meant in sickness and in health and understood that with me in sickness and in health meant alcoholism and bipolar too…I love you and D and I love our life and I want to save it. I remember good periods and bad periods, P. But, I choose to think about the good periods. I remember playing croquet in the yard. I remember going clamming with M T. I remember going to A to this dance. I remember your high school reunion. I remember the second week we were in Florida. I remember holding you close to me just the other night. I remember our vacation to California. I remember that all marriages take the good with the bad and that nothing is perfect. Most importantly, I remember that I love you. I remember putting your name in every book I have written…because without you I could not have written any of them. The most important things I have ever done career wise, I owe to you. I owe you the last ten years of my entire life. Without you, P, I would not be where I am today. I remember you giving me the house of my dreams and the furniture I desired and the garden that I longed for so much. I remember you believing in me time and time again, P, and that is why I love you…because you are good, strong, loyal, handsome, capable, intelligent, caring, and you love me. P, you have helped me more than any one person in the entire world. You have been there for me when no one else has. You are steadfast and strong. You have endured my ups and downs and still loved me. P, you are the rock that has held this family together. You have been our stability. You have been our blessing from God. You have been our foundation. You have filled the husband’s role as father and provider completely and more than I could ever ask for. You have given and given and rarely taken for yourself. You are unselfish and loving and kind. I admire and love you.
No one ever loved me like that besides you. I finally know that with the medication taken correctly…and with AA and with church…and most of all with you and D, and my writing, I have all I need to be happy. I love you, P. You are the only man that I will ever love with my entire heart and soul. Please know that I realize what a good and loving man you are, Colleen
