Profoundly profound

It never fails to amaze me how much I put up with-how much utter sadness and despair I can feel no matter what else is happening. I'm worried about myself. I thought I had found true love, the kind that is forgiving and loving, and suffers together when life hits you hard. I've found that I have been wrong and I have only fooled myself. In the back of my mind I wonder what it is about me that I'm not worth spending the rest of someone's life with. And then I realize that maybe I don't deserve it.

Friendship Requires Loyalty

1) Every relationship should first be a friendship 2) Friends stick up for each other no matter what 3) I expect and demand loyalty which doesn't meant you agree with everything I say, but if I feel unsafe or threatened then my word has to come first and foremost before everything else. Consider those expectations not met.

Don't Ask If You Don't Want to Know

I shouldn't have said anything, but I had to know. I asked because it would make me happy. Do I need a reason other than that? Am I loved? I am. Do I feel loved? I do. The professing of love and the depths of your soul are not words to be taken lightly. One would hope that those feelings would be reciprocated. When they aren't, it's crushing. It's debilitating. I am debilitated.

Been There, Done That

The injury was debilitating. While it wasn't as severe as some I have seen, it was more than enough for me to have to restrict myself in many categories, one of which includes dancing wildly in high heels. That being said, being injured was one of the best things to have ever happened to us. We went to work every day together and spent the evenings together and ate lunch together. It was so normal it was amazing. Then those four weeks were over and it was back to the same night and day schedule except I had a few extra hours in between from a prolonged light duty order. Something has changed between us for the better. My birthday was spectacular with a well thought out, planned scavenger hunt complete with tea dyed, crumpled paper that ended in a tent on the roof with breakfast and a cake. The surprise was a camping trip to Big Bend for New Years to prepare us for Mount Kilimanjaro. Wait, did I tell you we were hiking Mount Kilimanjaro to start off the new year? I must not have. We arrived in Africa in the middle of January only to begin the journey of a lifetime. Let me list the movie titles it could have been: -Cerebral Edema and Dexamethasone -Holes for toilets -Soup, soup, and more soup -Overhydrated -Sunburned -Sleep deprived -Learning to sleep together in a single bed But what it all ended up being was an amazing amount of teamwork with me and the man I am proud to call my partner. We made it to the top together and we made it back home safely. That's all that counts after all.

Injured

The other day I was playing intramural tennis when I sprained my ankle. Just a sprain you say? No, not just a sprain. I learned that it can damage what are called proprioceptors and that I will have to retrain them so that my brain can connect with my ankle and I won't ultimately lose balance, thereby causing another ankle sprain. Injuries take a while to heal even if we feel better. We take pain medicine to dull our pain and then it gives our bodies false confidence to do things it normally wouldn't do. We push our limits. In the end, our bodies are just as fragile and it takes time to heal. In any relationship, it works exactly the same. There are great times when everything is fantastic. And there are hard times. Times when we hurt each other, make the other person sad, and ultimately leave a scar that sometimes can't be removed. When we really hurt someone, it's akin to a sprain where we know the damage has been done and it will take recovery, but we power through it knowing that when it's healed, it will be better. The problem is that it won't be the same. We have to be careful about the things we do and the things we say to each other. Our hearts are just as fragile, if not more fragile than our bodies. Sprains have an 80% chance of occurring again and that is because it wasn't properly taken care of in the first place. The same happens between two people. If you don't take your time and do the necessary therapy then it will never heal and you will fall down again, but this together.

Has it really been this long?

I like to write when I know it's time for me to reflect, but looking back, it's been a few months. July was a bad month. I don't know how else to say it, but in terms of this relationship, it was either going to go great or go bad and unfortunately, it was affected by gravity. The month was full of drunken nights and misunderstandings and poor communication and most of that was not me. I lost my cool one night which turned into a trip to NYC to visit my good ole pal from middle school. Thinking this would solve the problem, I arrived home only to be picked up and have another situation affected by alcohol. Is it necessary to always have a drink? I was beginning to wonder if we could exist together without alcohol. That night turned into a frenzy of begging and pleading and an out of body experience where I didn't recognize the person I was and I didn't recognize the person I was with. Something told me to walk away and that this wasn't me, but something else told me to stay. A week and a half in Singapore and Cambodia was just what we needed. We were together the entire time and didn't need any time apart. It was like it always should have been. Just us. Together. All the time. The scenery was phenomenal and so was the people. But more importantly, we were a team and a unit and really a couple. There are days when I think that it will all turn back into those few weeks where things were so awful-days and nights when I wouldn't hear from him unless I went out of my way to visit or would call the unit myself. I can't live in the past and what happened because I can't change it. I can't bear to think of what it could be should something similar occur again. The truth is that I can't lose him. I know in my heart that there are many good guys out there, but he's the one for me. We sit on the same page and he's patient and loving and kind to me, my friends, and to my family. My greatest fear is that he does not feel the same way. I have to talk myself out of living fear in the hopes that things will flourish as a result of hard work, time spent, and a mutual respect for one another.

Gardening a Relationship

I was ruminative this past weekend as events unfolded that were beyond my control. I may have a different perspective based on the fact that I was exhausted from working and slightly affected by my good friend rum. A relationship is like a garden. You have to water it, take care of it, pull the weeds out, spending time with it, and most of all, you have to want to do those things so that it can grow. There will be times that your garden will suffer from the weather or lack of watering, but those are mistakes that require interventions that you correct along as you go. You don't have to water your garden every day, but you do have to water it more often than not and spend time making sure it is doing well. Even worse is when you over water your garden and you end up causing more damage than good. In a relationship you want to be able to give it all you've got while making sure you don't smother the person. You have to make plans for it, just as you would when picking seeds or spacing or an infestation of bugs when dealing with plants. You have to learn to be patient; plants don't grow quickly and neither do relationships. You have to care about it; when the motivation to nurture is gone, then the relationship is shot. Take care of your garden and the people you love. After all, what we have in this world isn't an amount of time that's expendable, it's an investment.