My dearest
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artaudxwilde once told me that when he had trouble with his relationship, he remembered something I said back in college, that relationships are work, which is why they are called relationships.
No, I don't quite remember what I meant by that, but I do know that they are work. Not all the time, and not all the work is unpleasant, but they are work.
And I was reminded of that recently.
KitKat and I had a summer apart, and it was hard. I was going through a lot of difficult stuff, and he was trying to figure out who he was absent all the trappings of the last decade (which is what I'm doing now.) We were operating in different places, not just physicaly but mentally and emotionally. We were there for each other, but I often felt terribly distant from him.
I arrived here at the end of July, and I was so nervous about seeing him. Things had changed, and I felt unsure of where we stood. I believed in us, or I would not have undertaken this move, this journey, driving across 11 states by myself. But I was still unsure.
Those first few days were...strange in some ways, familiar in others. We were so tentative with each other and yet there was a moment when I made some crack about something, and he laughed hard, and he told me he hadn't laughed like that all summer, and it felt like something was clicking into place.
But still we were tentative, and having a lot of difficult conversations. And yet before we'd spent 24 hours with each other, we were applying for a place to live (that we did not get, and thank goodness because where we are is everything I could have dreamed.) He told me then and several more times that he knew, he never doubted, and that he knew that we just had to get through those first days and weeks. But he wasn't just "getting through" them. We were actively working on our future. Our present was scary and strange and tense and I was anxious a lot of the time and he had moments of worry and despair, but we kept on applying for places to live and ordering mattresses and ...we kept on working on us, and we kept on working on our future despite how uncertain the present felt.
And now we are a few months in, and there's still lots of newness and we are by no means perfect and my anxiety sometimes gets too much in my own way, but we're good. We're solid. And sometimes I can beat my anxiety down by remembering that first application for a place to live...that he so believed in me, in us, that no matter how difficult that morning's conversation had been, there we were listing our rental histories and credit information and trying to get a roof over our heads, together. That? Is a relationship. That is love. And in some ways it is the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me.
And now I'm taking tentative steps toward a future I said was something I would never, ever consider. (More on that later.) And I am doing it in no small part because of his faith in me, and in us. And because I know that he'll catch me if I fall. I've told him that, and that I've never had that before. My father is gone and my mom is poor and my family is distant and my friends have their own stuff and I never felt like I could be supported emotionally or any other way if I fell with past partners, and my other partners now have their own stuff and things are different with them for Reasons but they are equally awesome and supportive, but with KitKat I know ....I know I don't have to do it all alone anymore, and that if I fall, yes, I will get back up, I must get back up, I will want to get back up, but if I fall, he'll catch me... and it will be a softer landing.
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timeasmymeasure
