Day Three Hundred and Forty Five - Withdrawal

I need my HLM back. I know she is off gallivanting with her man, but her person needs her back. I need soul food, video games, and crocheting. I need sleep deprived laughter and church parking lots. I need the smell of cloves and soothing tea.

I have also discovered without her and parking lot time, my writing dries up. Not a word has been written in my novel since she left. I cannot imagine another world for my characters without the intertwining of her heart and mine.

Despite my withdrawal, I am happy.

I am happy because I found my person in Iowa. I certainly have my other half but he can't take care of all the girly, HLM needs I have. So, today I am missing my person, happily aware that she will be returned to me.

Day Three Hundred and Forty Four - Cherished

I am beginning to understand why marriage is the symbol of God's love for us. Perfect love casts out fear. It also wipes a past clean away. Last night, I was having a conversation with my other half about our pasts. I kept bothering him to tell me everything. He didn't want to tell and I didn't want to tell because both of us were afraid. He was afraid I  would look at him differently. However, when asked if it would change my love for him, I could easily and fully say no. The man I am in love with is an amazing, man of God. His past neither determines his future or him. It certainly does not determine my love for him. I love him because who he is inside inspires me. I know if I let fear get a hold of me, I cannot fully love him for him. Suddenly, his past would torment and bother me. But I know with God's blessing and help fear will have no place in our future.

Fear is an ugly, nasty thing. I finally told him about my fears and we faced them together. Amazingly, he does look at me differently. He looks at me with more love and tenderness than before.  My favorite part: the way he looks at me is starting to help me understand how God looks at me.
I am cherished.
He is cherished.
Fear has no place.

Day Three Hundred and Forty Three - Get off the Fence

I am going to pollute my dear friends blog today with a slightly political post. Please, don't stop reading simply because you read the word politics.

I am annoyed with the people of America. Not because of who won the presidential election. I am mad because all of those people who are now currently complaining and whining about the evil that will face America in the next four years believed their vote had power. They believed their voice could make change. Now suddenly, they have reverted back to believing the President holds the key to how a culture lives. If a voice can truly make a difference, why don't you take it one step further and believe an action can make a difference?

I don't mean go protest at abortion clinics, using your voice to sound your irritation and anger. I mean, go live with the people who need hope. Find individuals who feel lost, stuck, lonely, and hurt. Love them. Take all of your energy you seem willing to pour into facebook posts, picket signs, and soapbox preaching... now use your energy for that Truth you keep saying you believe in. Stop waiting for our country to do what you think best and start being the difference you want to see.

The President, Congress, or any government official does not determine what you choose to do with your every breath. Stop using your breath to disrespect others and to spread fear. Start using it to fill your lungs with fresh air as you take a step off that fence of apathy, anger, and self-indulgence.

Day Three Hundred and Forty Two - The Real World

The real world is far more muddled than people said. Or, maybe they told us but we didn't listen. All I know is all that "knowledge" we spent years of learning is fairly useless in the real world. In fact, the higher you go in education, the more education you are required to unlearn.

I don't recall ever being taught that even good choices have consequences that will hurt. In fact, some good choices have painful consequences that will last a lifetime. I chose to leave my little town in Iowa to go to college in NY. I fell in love with the people of NY and a struggling city. After four years, I made a choice to move back home. I knew the choice I had made was the right one. Yet, every day my heart hurts from the choice I made. I left a home to go to a home. No matter where I am, something/someone is always left behind and sorely missed. Even if I went back tomorrow, that home would not be the same.

I don't recall anyone ever telling me how difficult graduating college would be. Sure, they may have said the real world is difficult. No one excuses late work in an actual job. Bills will constantly demand more of you than you have to give. Daily life is exhausting and tedious. I remember all of those words of wisdom. Still, I don't recall anyone saying you will feel alone in the world after so many years of constant companionship. I don't remember them saying the in-between years are the years you feel lost. You are no longer a child and you are expected to be an adult, all while feeling somewhere in-between.

Pieces of my life are finally fitting together. I found several kindred spirits in Iowa. I even found the love of my life here. I thought I found my big-girl job. Turns out, I need to find a better big-girl job.

Despite the pieces that fit, so many more just don't. Where is real faith, full of questions and passion? How do you live in a culture that you now despise? How do you hold onto friends living over 1,000 miles away?

A professor once told me, questions of life are not to be answered right away. Questions of life must be lived out until they become new questions. She was right. I know she was right. What I need to know... how do you live a question?

Day Three Hundred and Forty One - Insomnia

I've never slept well with people. Ever since Tiffany (love you Tiffers, but it's true) who liked to kick the crap out of me in her sleep, I really just sleep better alone. Always have. At sleepovers, I was always the one that took the couch or the chair or the floor, because you get to sleep alone. I just had no desire to share a bed. Well. Until now.

And here's the thing. Anthem and I haven't slept together (both versions of the word, just to be clear.). But we haven't slept in the same bed. Yet I have become an insomniac over the last few weeks. And I know it's because I'll only sleep well next to him. That's... where I belong. Next to him. And it's going to be a while until I get to spend my nights next to him. So... basically I've signed up for months and months of insomnia because I gave my heart away and it changed me. 

It's worth it but... it sucks. I'm so tired. Even as tired as I am, I realize how incredible it is that my heart has changed so much that it's affecting my habits from halfway across the country. That... that's something special. 

Day Three Hundred and Forty - And I'm The Weird One

I'm tired tonight. Tired of living in this society. Tired of this culture. Don't get me wrong, I'm thankful for my country and my rights and my equality. But there are parts I don't agree with or like either.

Like our culture's tendency to portray men as big dumb idiots that women keep around purely for procreation. (Don't believe me? Watch a commercial. Who is making the decisions? Who controls the household? The checkbook? Yea.) I don't want a marriage like that. I have no intention of trying to be in control of every aspect of my home or husband. We'll be partners. I have no intention of marrying an idiot. I have no intention of treating my incredible man as if he is an idiot. And yet... I'm the weird one.

Like our culture's tendency to treat relationships like they're disposable paper plates. It literally hurts me to overhear conversations about this. (Note: I work in a mall, I overhear a whole lot of drama.) Relationships seem entirely dominated by a desire for dominance and indulgence and selfishness. To be considerate of your partner is seen as a freaking miracle. To be constantly in and out of 'love' and then hating them so much you can't stand them and think that everything they do is somehow offensive to humanity is normal. Maybe it's just me but I don't hate a single person that I have loved. And I only use loved in the past tense because I don't know them anymore, so I can't love someone I don't know anymore. And yet... I'm the weird one. 

Like our tendency to expect that love fades and eventually everything will be routine and soul numbing. When did that become the expectation? When did that become so incredibly normal that to even desire something else is seen as naive and impossible? No. I will not settle for that. I don't care what I have to do to keep my marriage fresh and exciting, I'm going to do it. I'm not going to settle for a boring life or a boring marriage, and it makes me really sad that some people have. Oh yea, and it's become normal. So normal that being determined to fight it makes me the weird one. 

Like our culture's tendency to give power of our relationship over to Facebook. Just in care you're one of the rare people that have found this blog outside of Facebook, Anthem and I are not 'facebook official'. Because frankly.. neither of us really care. It doesn't affect our relationship. And yet due to the lack my facebook relationship status not including his name, he's been accused (by various friends and acquaintances) of being a cheater, of being ashamed of me, of being a commitaphobe, and of being a player. That's how much power my generation has given a website. Just for everyone's information, there are specific reasons why we haven't gone 'public' with our relationship. And I trust him, completely. And for trusting my man more than a website... I'm the weird one. 

I am tired, but I'm not giving in. It's my life, and I have the power over it. I've honestly just stopped caring about people's opinions. I enjoy their shocked faces, but am no longer affected by their condescension. Think what you want. I'd rather you think I'm naive than be miserable. Because that's what all of these cultural tendencies have in common. The wife that is married to an imbecile... she's miserable. The in and out of 'love'rs that end up hating half the town because they have dated and dumped (or been dumped) every other week... they're miserable. The married (or simply long term) couples that don't even try to seduce, tease, play, or attempt to enjoy each other anymore... they're miserable. And those whose lives are dominated by a social media site... they're miserable too. 

...I'm so glad I'm the weird one. I just wish everyone was as weird as I am.  

Day Three Hundred and Thirty Nine - Cope

I heard this amazing quote via Anthem from a guy who had no idea he was saying something rather fantastic. "I'm coping with having the best relationship of my life." 

I raise my invisibly glass of something delicious to that guy. He's a poet. Coping is the perfect word. See, almost everyone I know is sort of a pessimist. Realists at the very least. And firm believers in Murphy's Law. We're sort of used to getting the shit kicked out of us by life. We're sort of used to things, and people, not being what they seemed. Just scraping by is a win for us. We've just sort of come to expect the worst because then it just won't hurt as much. 

Let me tell you, Murphy leaves you completely unprepared for when everything goes right. I'm at a total loss. I have the absolute best, sweetest, most generous, caring, devoted, passionate, faithful (both senses of the word) man I could have ever dreamed of and I have to rethink everything. My habits of expecting the worst are not only rude at this point, but destructive. For example: my habit of being afraid of rejection is now absurd and unnecessary and yet I still act on that fear, not because I'm afraid anymore, but because I'm so used to being afraid its a habit. It's destructive because Anthem has never once rejected me in any way, and for me to act as if he has hurts him. 

And so I cope. I have to consciously think, all the time, about what I'm saying and doing, or actually why I'm saying and doing anything. Because that's not my life anymore. Fear and disappointment are no longer the themes of my life. I'm safe. I'm loved. I'm cherished. I'm pursued in more ways than I ever dreamed. I'm gleefully happy. My old standards just don't cut it anymore, and I'm having to negotiate the happier side of life. And it does feel like coping. 

It is coping. I'm having to relearn how to live my life without fear or baggage, and with freedom and curiosity. I'm having to relearn how to not do everything by myself and enjoy having a partner by my side. I'm relearning how I live my life, how I think about my future, how I communicate. And it's not always easy. Old habits die hard. But die they must, because I'm never going back.