Pastel on paper

Signed on the front.

This piece is about forgiveness.
It’s about my own divorce, but every human loves, and others, if they are lucky, know a love like mine for my ex-wife.
Her heart is indescribably beautiful.
She is the most kind, most brilliant, most gentle person I have ever met.
But she met someone else. She fell in love.
Because love… fades.
I’ve been writing about us, and how I lost her, and I’ve been drawing and painting her, and her and I, and I’m writing a song that it hurts to sing. Because I love her yet. I miss her. Even though she turned away from me.
I’m trying to heal.
I don’t blame her. Human hearts change. It still burns and hurts and cuts me, even after four years apart from her. But there is no bitterness, not from me.
I never raised my voice to her. We never fought. We were best friends, and we never stopped laughing and doing loony stuff together. The day before she left, we got into trouble at the supermarket for me pushing her while she sat in the front, zooming around as she made racing car noises. We kept having fun. But we didn't fight.
Even when, I now understand, she had fallen out of love with me.
Even when she left.
My ex-wife is full of love: The day after she was diagnosed with cancer, she drove to KALGOORLIE and back to rescue two dogs.
She’s in remission, but that year was hell. I never stopped supporting her, caring for her. I loved her well.
But love fades.
She fell for someone else, and she was with them – she loved him – physically, yes, two years before she left. It hurts.
But she is so beautiful inside. She is so broken. So very beautiful. So very broken.
This is why I grieve for her. Why I never stopped grieving for her as I loved her and loved her and held her and held her and kissed the softness of her skin, her cheeks, her lips.
As my lips brushed her eyelids as she cried.
As I love her yet.
As I will, forever.
This is why I forgive her.
I'm not in love with her. I don't wish to be with her.
But it still hurts. It will always hurt.
Even though it is true, love fades, I know that it will never stop hurting.
I do not regret a moment that we were together.
Being married to her was a privilege, and the most true, the most intense, happiness I have ever known.

This is why I made this piece.
We're all the same. Every heart has been broken. I hope that other people have known someone as intoxicating, as incredible, as full of love and gentleness and genius, as my ex-wife.
I am certain that others will see the truth and the swell of passion in this work.
It's beautiful. And it is True.
Isn't it beautiful?
I made it, and it makes me cry with its beauty and its truth.
I hope that whomever it is that buys it sees what passion and love there is in its lines and smears and colours.
Paul.