Why I Can't Stop Crying

I've just finished reading the first chapter of the third book in the Ender's Game series. I can't stop crying. It's seven pages about characters of whom I know nothing, and yet I can't stop crying. I even put the book down and went off to do other stuff, and I still can't stop crying. Why? Because in seven pages, I realized that the dream I've long since given up on is the ideal that makes marriage so perfect for so many people, and it's a happiness I am afraid I am doomed to live without. In seven pages, I saw a man's intellectual and philosophical dependence on his wife--a dependence that I have never been capable of relinquishing because I do not trust people to be correct. I do not trust people to not screw things up. But if I cannot trust the woman I love to be competent, then how can I completely love her? How could I ever truly depend on her? How could I ever commune with her at all? If I see most everyone as inferior to myself, if I see her as inferior to myself, then the only love I can ever experience is a small slice of the whole--an appetizer. It's a taste of what could be, and it only serves to whet my appetite for something more. The more I learn, I realize I've settled in the past. I've settled for less than I deserve. It's not about beauty or attractiveness. It's not about what she does for me or what I do for her. It's about whether it's even possible for one to understand what the other desires to convey. If this cannot be achieved in both directions, the relationship is doomed to failure for at least one will find this to be an unbearably lonely existence, where not even the person you share your life with can comprehend your desires, curiosities, whims, theories, confusions, joys, bursts of insight, or even the reasons for why you feel you are not understood.

If I ever do find this, I will fight to the death to keep it. In seven pages, we see this. If she were to ever die, there would surely be nothing left worth living for.

From last night's movie: "WITHOUT YOU, I'm as lonely as an abandoned dog on the side of a highway. ... I declare now that I will give my life to you, and if you fail to come to me, I know some part of me will surely die."

I die a little every day. And so I cry.