A Kind of Fantasy

I have a vision of us, maybe months or years from now, lying in a shared bed in my lamp-lit room, our legs tangled underneath the covers. It’s quiet and dark, and I’m sitting up. You’re sleepy, your breathing slow and steady, and your arm is tossed gently across my lap. Things feel easy and tender and calm, but I’m staring at the wall, not really seeing anything, and when you open your eyes and look up at me, something in my expression makes you ask, half asleep,

“What are you thinking about?”

And I take a deep breath and search for the words I know might shatter the illusion we’ve made for ourselves and chosen to indulge in – guiltily and recklessly, with some vague and faraway idea of potential consequence and disaster.

“I don’t want to say I’m in love with you, but I am.”

And you shift and lean up on your elbow, your arm still in my lap, then wrapping itself around me, pulling me closer.

I tell you that it scares me because I’m so aware of the gravity of everything I feel for you – that all-encompassing force that consumes everything else – and I’m worried that to you, this is just a passing phase – something to explore and experience, but eventually close as a finished chapter in the story of your life. I tell you that I see you ending up with a pretty girl someday, getting married and having beautiful children, growing out of what we have in favour of the more traditional life I believe you’re fated for – some easier promise of lasting happiness.

I tell you that I can’t see us lasting.

And for a while you don’t say anything. We just sit there breathing in the dark, the weight of everything I’ve just said stuck in the air around us. I know that you know I’m being realistic – that my fears are based in something true – and there’s really nothing you can say to refute that terrible accusation; that your love for me, or whatever it is, was never meant to last, and we both should’ve known better than to think it could’ve been any other way.

So there we are, left with silence and uncertainty. My imagination runs dry before I can think of how you’d respond, but the thing is, I’m still willing to be with you for as long as I can be with you, even though I’ve already envisioned our end. I want to share the moments we can together and be happy with each other for at least a little while. I’m still willing to risk it all knowing that I’m probably going to end up with a heartbreak greater than any I’ve ever known.

And what should we call that? Love, or stupidity, or both?

I guess I would like to call it courage.