In the last piece, I talked about life after nursing — and one of the most striking parts of that transition has been time.
Time to think.
Sometimes that thinking is productive. Sometimes it’s just rumination wearing a lab coat and pretending to be analysis.
Anyone who knows me — and knows the grief arc I’ve walked — understands that nearly three years out, I’m still tangled in it. And at this point, it’s not just grief over his death. It’s grief over the version of myself that stayed. The years I could have walked away and didn’t.
That realization is heavy.
It takes two to tango. There were many points where I could have chosen differently. But when you invest years of effort into something, walking away can feel like admitting failure. Effort becomes glue. And glue can hold together things that probably should have been dismantled.
That’s not easy to admit.
So let me pose a question:
When you tell someone you love them… who are you trying to convince?
Is it an honest statement?
Or is it something we say because we’re supposed to say it?
For me, “I love you” became reflexive. I say it before parting ways — not always out of present affection, but out of fear. Fear that I might not get another chance to say it. Because once, I didn’t.
Regret has a long memory.
And lately I’ve been asking myself: how many times did I say it and truly mean it?
In the last five years of my marriage, I suspect it was often reflex. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t love. But the liking? That was gone.
And liking matters.
We tend to treat love as a single monolithic force, but even in Sunday school we were taught otherwise:
- Eros – romantic, passionate love
- Philia – friendship
- Storge – familial love
- Agape – unconditional, human-to-human grace
These are not the same thing.
You can like someone and not love them romantically.
You can love someone and not like them at all.
You can feel agape for humanity while avoiding certain humans entirely.
In my world, the intensity of love is often driven by liking. When the liking fades, love becomes abstract. Structural. Conceptual. Basic.
And I think we confuse ourselves because culturally, we are expected to say “I love you” whether we feel eros, philia, storge, agape — or none of the above in that moment.
We say it because silence feels dangerous.
Lessons from the Wasteland
The wasteland strips this down.
In Fallout — whether it’s the series or the game — relationships aren’t built on constant verbal reassurance. They’re built on shared survival. Shared resources. Shared risk.
Lucy trusts everyone. Most of us? We’re closer to the Ghoul.
We don’t blindly offer loyalty. We offer it where it’s earned.
And yet, even in the wasteland, there are moments of quiet generosity. We help new arrivals with basic supplies. We let them tag along on a quest. We give a thumbs up and go back to what we were doing.
We don’t necessarily declare love.
We demonstrate alignment.
Maybe that’s the lesson.
Maybe instead of obsessing over whether we’ve said “I love you” enough times, we should focus on what kind of love we’re actually offering.
Is it eros?
Is it friendship?
Is it duty?
Is it agape — human decency without intimacy?
Maybe clarity matters more than repetition.
I can say with certainty there are at least two beings I love without qualification: my mom and my dog.
The rest? I’m still untangling.
And that’s okay.
Thank you for reading.