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Which sounds ridiculous when we're not even talking.
It's called Secure Love, by Sue Johnson. It's about attachment. About what happens when two people love each other but fear gets tangled up in the middle of it.
I keep wanting to send it to you because reading about attachment changed so much for me. It gave me words for things I couldn't understand when we were together.
For why I panicked when you pulled away.
For why the more scared I became of losing you, the harder I tried to get closer.
For how two people can end up protecting themselves from each other when what they actually want is to feel safe with each other.
I don't want to send it as an accusation.
I don't want to diagnose you.
I don't want it to be another attempt to convince you to come back.
I think I just want you to understand what I've started to understand.
Because underneath all the terrible conversations, the distance, the defensiveness, the silence and the things we both wish we'd done differently, there was something very simple.
I loved you.
And I was scared. And I think maybe those two things became so tangled together that eventually neither of us knew how to reach for the other without also protecting ourselves.
Maybe you'd read it and think I'm completely wrong.
Maybe you'd read ten pages and throw it across the room.
Maybe you'd never open it.
But there's a part of me that wants to put it in the post anyway.
Not because a book can fix us.
Because I wish we'd had these words when we were still trying.
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