Love without disappearance

Many of us learned that to love is to dissolve. To fold ourselves into another person until there is very little left that is only ours.

It can feel like devotion. It is often closer to fear. If I become what you need, perhaps you will not leave.

But love that requires your disappearance is not sustainable. Eventually the self that was set aside begins to ask for its life back.

There is another way. To stay close and stay whole. To let the relationship be a meeting of two centers, rather than the erasure of one.

This is not distance. It is a deeper kind of presence, the kind that can only come from someone who is actually still there.