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Ain't No Mountain High Enough
First � and foremost. Thank you, everyone, for assuring me that I�m not crazy and for the emails and notes letting me know that you�re out there. We�re going to get through this. The surgery is this week. The anti-inflammatory drugs they�ve put Oliver on in the meantime make him think that he�s totally healed and all the sudden it�s nothing for him to take off in a gimpy sprint across the yard to chase after birds. He prances around the house with his toy hanging out of his mouth begging anyone and everyone to play tug with him. Saturday when I was out working in the yard he found a ratty old tennis ball and kept dropping it in front of my face trying to get me to throw it for him. He misses playing ball. He doesn�t get why he can�t play ball right now. If nothing else, it is this (naughty naughty) energy that tells me I�m doing the right thing. I went golfing with the boy yesterday. I wasn�t aware of it beforehand, but this was a crossing over into a whole new comfort level. Competitive sports. Turns out, I sometimes take myself too seriously. I also sometimes get a little wrapped up in competition. I�m also not over the feeling like I need to impress the boy. All these things made the first half of our game pretty tense and, I�m pretty sure, I made him upset with me for the first time. It was touch and go for a little while, but we ironed it out and the last half of the game was incredibly fun. I didn�t golf my best game, but that wasn�t the point. I know better than to take myself so seriously. It�ll be better from here on out because the first hurtle has been crossed. He�s seen me play. He knows my game. I can play worse than that and I can play better than that but the understanding we came to (and the one that he had all along) is that we�re out there to have fun. I can do that. Having fun, actually, is something that the boy and I excel at. My big thing over the last couple of years has been that relationships are supposed to be easy. I�m sure that I read that somewhere (I know that I did actually � �In the Meantime� by Iyanla Vanzant. The book was my bible at one time and pieces of it have stuck with me) and somewhere along the line I made it my mantra. My past relationships weren�t easy. Nothing about them was easy. All the angst and the work they involved. How many times I bit my tongue or hid a part of myself or backed down on something in order to keep the peace. What I put up with � the name calling and the infidelity. My belief was always that relationships are hard work and that if we could get through the bad times, we could get through anything. The trouble was that it was all bad times. It was always hard work. We never reached a place where things just moved smoothly and we just trusted each other to not hurt each other because we never started out at that place. After my last relationship ended, I decided that there were mistakes I wasn�t going to repeat. There were relationships I wasn�t interested in being a part of anymore. There were people I refused get involved with. I decided that the next time I did it, I was going to do it right. Relationships don�t need to hurt all the time. Relationships can be hard work, but that�s not what�s at the core of relationships. My thoughts have been: You�re not a hero for beating your head against the wall to make something work. If it�s not working, it�s not working. If it hurts more than it feels good, it�s not healthy. Be honest with yourself. It took three years. I dated during that time, of course. I kept thinking I was ready to throw my hat back into the ring and I�d go a couple of rounds and decide that maybe I wasn�t ready after all. I made the commitment to myself that I absolutely would not settle for something that didn�t meet my criteria. I wouldn�t get involved in something that chipped away at me. If there was going to be a relationship, it was going to be easy. I wasn�t interested in drama. I absolutely wasn�t interested in games. I cannot begin to express how lucky I feel right now. For the first time � it�s easy. There�s no struggle. The biggest problem we have is how difficult it is for us to spend time apart. It�s not that we agree on everything because that would be boring, it�s just that we�re on the same page. We�ve always been on the same page. We don�t have to work to keep things interesting or to make sure that we keep each other interested � it�s a given. It�s possible that he has no idea of the effect that he has on me. When we�re standing on his front deck and he takes my hand and he twirls me in a circle like we�re dancing and when I come back around from the twirl he wraps me in his arms and kiss me and I think about it later, how I always thought that that sort of thing only happened in romance books and now�now it�s happening to me. It�s such a small thing and at the time it didn�t even register as something I should take note of � but I did and I�m glad I did because right now that one little action sums up all of my favorite things about us. After this, being a part of this and experiencing this and knowing how much fun it can be and how wonderful it can be and figuring out where your life has to be when the biggest relationship gripe you can come up with is that you don�t know on Monday morning whether or not you�re going to see each other again before Friday afternoon and knowing that my life is there now and God, it took forever, but the wait was worth it�absolutely� I�m so glad that everything I went through before led me to where I was when I met him. I�ve been so in awe of this. Even a little bit afraid of this because I�m not used to all this �good� and all this �healthy�. I know that eventually this is going to mellow into something different. I know that we can�t stay this wrapped up in each other forever. I�m still not convinced that he�s not going to get sick of me and tell me to go away. It�s not flawless any more than I am flawless. But it�s good. And I�m happy. It�s taken me all day to write this. I wanted to get it just right. I�m still not happy with it, but my day is coming to an end and I want to get something posted before I leave work. Someday, maybe, I�ll be able to do justice to the way I feel and what�s going on in my head. It�s still too big for me for now though so I�m just stumbling through it. Happily. Happily stumbling through this. |
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