No One's Gonna Love You

This morning on my bike ride to work -- on yet another breathtakingly beautiful Fall morning -- this song started playing in my head:

It's looking like a limb torn off
Or altogether just taken apart
We're reeling through an endless fall
We are the ever-living ghost of what once was

But no one is ever gonna love you more than I do
No one's gonna love you more than I do

And anything to make you smile
It is my better side of you to admire
But they should never take so long
Just to be over then back to another one

But no one is ever gonna love you more than I do
No one's gonna love you more than I do

Maybe it's because Band of Horses is playing at the Orpheum this weekend, but I reckon it is more likely because I once said something similar to the New Englander before he left. I didn't quite say no one's gonna love you more than I do, but I did say: "If anyone ever loves you again the way I love you, do us all a favor, and don't walk away from it." And I remember him tearfully replying in the affirmative.

Back in March, I wrote him a letter saying that I didn't want to be in contact with him unless he decided that he is all in, in a way beyond the extent he was in before: Ready to be vulnerable.

Then last week Monday, I went to a Reiki session, in which I set the intention to open to the support that is available to me. (I've been feeling pretty alone with some challenging parenting and life stuff.) The next day, I got an email from the New Englander, which turned into another email, and a letter, all of which added up to him being all in, wanting to get back together, wanting to come back.

I cried when I read them (big shocker) -- partly with relief that what I knew to be true had been confirmed -- and partly with fear of opening myself up to the potential for the kind of heartbreak I experienced before:

But someone,
They could have warned you
When things start splitting at the seams and now
The whole thing's tumbling down
Things start splitting at the seams and now
If things start splitting at the seams and now,
It's tumbling down
Hard.

So hard. I don't have to make a decision today, so I won't. I'm just going to sit with the mix of knowledge that the two of us share a powerful love and there were some major ways in which it didn't work before -- what is there to suggest it would be different this time? I'm still gathering evidence on that, while listening to my heart:

But no one is ever gonna love you more than I do
No one's gonna love you more than I do

...which is one hell of a lot...