Eric isn't happy.  He was,  a week or so ago.  He was the sort of incandescent soul happy that dazzles you with the brightness of it.  And he's not anymore, his spark of joy has dimmed and gone out like a candle when the wick burns down to nothing.....

He's also not sad.  His sad gets fathomless, and when it's strong it feels like it will drown me in it and I can't breathe.  His sorrow is like jumping in deep water you can't measure and sinking and sinking, hoping you'll eventually touch bottom so you can kick back up to the surface before you run out of air. And this isn't that....

This is....  Resigned. Scared, but the sort of scared like a kid who did wrong they feel bad about, knowing they deserve whatever consequences are meted out. Penitent.  Defeated. Hollow. It's like these things. None of those is quite the word I want, but getting close.

I don't know exactly why,  I just know is....

And he hasn't been reaching for me on the bond recently....  Not because his love isn't there but because.... It's like....  He's scared of  what it would do to him to not feel the rush of returned love, but he doesn't feel he deserves that love if he were to receive it. He still wants it,  quite desperately, but he's very afraid if he reaches for my love he won't feel it reaching back to him because he doesn't feel he deserves it.

Silly boy.  Love isn't created or destroyed based on deserving it - love is just....  The joy and wonder and delight that something IS,  that it exists.  The only way you destroy love is by destroying/negating that isness, or by realizing it never existed outside your imagined belief in it (and even then,  you'll still love the IDEA of that isness existing,  you'll just feel sad/hurt/betrayed from your mistaken belief it resided somewhere it didn't.)  And souls don't get mistaken about isness,  only lust/desire blinding you to reality leads to mistakes about isness.  Never soul meeting soul.

My soul has no more idea how not to react with joy and delight and light that his soul IS than it knows how to deny its own esse.

Of all the things for him to worry about, that's not one of them.  I may have to come to terms with hard truths about the circumstances of any given life and/or the consequences of choices from lessons someone refuses to learn, but that will never quench or dim my love and delight that he IS.  It just means that for the time,  I need to let him go,  no matter the pain in that, so he (or I) can find the way back to our clearest brightest burning truths and by doing so find our souls way back to the place where we can both feel the intensity of joy in the other EXISTING and being lucky/good enough to get to have that goodness coexist.

I don't ever let him go out of my lives because of a dimming of my love that his soul IS. I let him go so whichever of us has fallen away from the best and brightest in us can follow the soul's karmic path back to our own truth.  Because we can't hurt each other when we're true to our own soul's esse,  we only can hurt each other when we fall away from our truths.  And only by coming back to the brightest best expression of our soul's truth, the isness that is the source of love and joy and wonder that that isness EXISTS,  do we heal those hurts in each other.

But as long as that esse that defines him IS,  there could never be a time his soul could reach for me without hearing back from my soul all my delight and wonder he IS.  nothing else,  in any lifetime, can get in the way of that - they're all just choices and lessons we need to take us further from or closest to the clearest brightest isness of the soul.

And yes.  I was wrong all these centuries to doubt and start thinking he'd ceased wanting me or loving my soul for existing just because our life paths weren't crossing. His soul could no more fall out of that joy/delight my soul IS than mine can stop delighting that his soul IS.

It doesn't fix mistakes that have been made or choices that are being allowed to come between us this life. Only our choices to actively do better and to put in the hard work of healing to grow new trust can do that.

We can make ourselves as miserable as we want in choices that require temporary separation across however long the lesson(s) take. Or we can make ourselves as deliriously happy as we want to be if we both commit ourselves to choices that bring us back to our truest selves and thus back to each other.  And if we get damn lucky, we can get the timing right to both be making choices in our lessons to bring us together...

But still it helps to know that the love itself that forged the bond between our souls,  that it will always exist so long as each of our souls exists because it is created solely of that joy in knowing the other soul exists.

And that's not something anyone can take from us. No deliberate malice or accidental ignorance of any other soul can take that bright shining soul to soul love from us.   They can get in the way, like storms blocking out the sun or being made captive in a room with no windows, but they cannot ever destroy or take away that light.  It's like that.  That's how a love shines that's born from the soul's joy/wonder another soul IS. The things in between can't destroy it or touch it, they just get in the way of you receiving it for the time they stand between.

Of all the things for him to fear, in any life, he never needs to fear losing my love not feeling it shine from my soul back at him if he reaches me with his love.

And knowing/remembering that truth about it...  That's also a bit of a miracle of light and joy and wonder that it's true. Y'know? Like holding in your hand a bit of starlight turned to crystal, so it can't burn you, that will light you through the dark parts back to the brighter light of that love itself.