every limit is a beginning as well as an ending

For a long time, I was the fascinated one, and he the admired. 

 

I marveled at his ease, his sureness, the way his confidence filled a room and left no corner uncertain. I watched with rapt attention. I wrote letters, small devotions in ink on paper. I scoured the earth for the perfect gift. I traveled to visit him. He cooked for me. He liked to feed people—meat seared, wine poured—and I, in turn, fed him with words. 

 

This blog was the one place where our balance reversed. Here, he became the reader and I, the voice. For years he read everything, faithfully, each post a continuation of our conversation. You make me think, he said once. You're so smart, and still so fun. 

 

Then, over time, he stopped following. "I really need to catch up," he'd say—but never did. "I really ought to take a weekend to read everything." That was the quiet red flag, when the mutual interest began to leak out through invisible seams. 

 

At first I mistook my hurt for vanity, my ego stinging at being less admired. But that wasn't it. It wasn't about being read every single day, every single post; it was about being prioritized. Mutual attention and admiration had been the bridge between us, and when it fell into disrepair, I realized how much of myself had been crossing it. How much of the effort had been mine alone.

 

What I felt was not wounded pride, but the grief of unreciprocated curiosity—the powerful ache of loss when someone stops wondering about you. Because love, at its most alive, is made of wonder: not only "I love who you are", but "I love the revelation of who you are becoming". 

 

When that discovery ended, something within me turned its face toward a different sun. I began to write (and blog) more, not less. I formed new patterns, habits, and small rituals just for me. I sought spaces where my own curiosity could breathe freely again—places where thought could stretch without waiting to be met. 

 

He had been the admired; I was the fascinated. 

But somewhere along the way, I became both, for myself: the question and the answer, the seeker and the seen. 

 

[the title quotation is by George Eliot, from Middlemarch]