Before the first appointment of the day, I had a conversation with Jeff about Bear.
I already knew the truth.
I couldn’t care for Bear physically or financially. Wanting him wasn’t enough. Taking him in when I couldn’t give him what he needed wouldn’t have been fair to either of us.
Knowing that didn’t make saying it easier.
I felt myself getting choked up. My hormones were still unsettled from treatment, and it didn’t take much to bring tears close to the surface. I fought them because there were appointments ahead and things that still needed to be done.
First came the echocardiogram.
I got through it, although it left me tired. Then I caught a Lyft to Stroger for the full-body scan following my radioactive iodine treatment.
The afternoon scan went better than the first one. It took less time, and I didn’t need another radiation pill because enough remained in my body from the treatment.
By the time I got home around 4:30, I was exhausted.
Jeff and Bear were outside when the car dropped me off.
A little later, Jeff and I went out for split pea soup. I paid. Then I bought the last of the soup to bring home for him.
It wasn’t a grand gesture. It was soup.
But it was something I could give.
That was the quiet truth running beneath the entire day.
There was care I couldn’t provide, no matter how much I wanted to. There was care I had to receive because my body couldn’t carry the day alone. And there was care I could still offer in return, even if it came in a takeout container filled with split pea soup.
I used to think love meant doing everything.
Maybe love is more honest than that.
Sometimes love means admitting what I cannot carry. Sometimes it means allowing someone else to help me. Sometimes it means noticing one small thing I can do and doing it without treating its size as a measure of its worth.
I couldn’t solve everything that day.
I could tell the truth about Bear.
I could get through the appointments.
I could buy the soup.
That was what care could hold.
Alignment Before Outcome
Accepting my limits did not mean I cared less.
It meant I stopped asking love to make promises my body and circumstances could not keep.
Alignment did not remove the sadness. It helped me respond honestly to it.
I could not give everything.
I could give what was mine to give.
Quote
“Love is not doing everything. Sometimes it is telling the truth about what I can carry.”
