Betrayal?

 Am I betraying my sweetheart to write about him here?

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I ask myself this about every topic and every memory I share. Once, long, long ago during my first burst of writing fiction, I asked him if he minded if I wrote about him.  He said, "Yes" and so I didn't but found other intense relationships to address with pen and ink.

Later I wrote a bad novel with Will as one of the characters.  Not a lead character, no, but the loving husband of a rapacious gay man who was center to the tale.  My spouse read it and had little comment on it.  (The outside world gave about 35 rejections, one of which, by a leading gay NY editor, was actually rather "positive.)  

Once, after a poetry reading during which I'd read a revealing, published poem, I asked Will how he felt about my sharing such work.  He said, "It's all part of the literary life."

Our relationship has been filled with perceived betrayals on both sides.  But it's also been filled with a love that could contain and drown the pain of our differences.  We forgave each other over and over, though usually with actions rather than words (he was far better at this than I).

And now we are in the last, long, strange, part of our journey together.  If he understood and "felt" what was happening to him, he would be very sad.  Or he could still be as angry and frightened as he was at the start.  As it is, he seems relatively cheerful or he's asleep.  

And I think my fear of betraying him is a sign of that evil, lingering, unconscious hope that he will be my husband again and be angry and hurt that I'm writing this. 

My husband is gone.

My sweetheart is still with me.