Reading this back, I think this one might have to become another cringe spoken word poem.
My second anniversary with my girlfriend is right around the corner. And shortly after that, I’ll be 26 years old. Time flies.
Yet it feels like it has been forever here. It is shocking to look back at the way things were two years ago. It was an entirely different world. The way each day felt was different. The way I interacted with myself, with people around me, an entirely foreign concept now. The way I thought, actions I took. Yet each individual day, save for a few major ones, didn’t feel like any transitory period in and of themselves.
On occasion, as we all do, I look back. I think that’s a good thing, to reflect on that. Not out of some form of nostalgia, but just as an outside observer.
I think there were good times then. Of course there were. It’s life, and life is a wonderful thing, and this world is beautiful every day. But I think there was also anxiety. I didn’t realize until it stopped being there, but it existed like a weighted blanket constantly draped over each waking moment, and half the sleeping ones as well. I think some of this was situational, but some of it was absolutely controllable. And in the ways it was controllable, lessons from it can be learned.
Now, that is a fever dream. Things are better. My relationship with my family, extended and otherwise, is amazing. I went out multiple times a week this summer to help my grandmother garden, and I’d have wanted nothing else. Until the car died. That said, there’s a nice red ’86 oldsmobile in great condition available out there calling my name. I was never a car guy, but damn if I haven’t fallen a bit for those older cars. Besides, they can be repaired without some proprietary computer bullshit. You learn enough about computers, you start to want less of them. Money is not something I worry about, partially due to the actions of my past self, partially due to current ones, but we are definitely not frugal at this point. Somehow, though, it all more than works despite that.
To describe how the last two years have been with Holly, where should I start? I have said it all before, and a tiny part of me sometimes peeks up from under some old habits and says “this is an illusion, do not count on it”. But for once, it is incredibly easy to silence that bastard. He exists still, as some thing that tries to peek up every once in awhile, but while it used to take effort to silence it, it is now dismissed as easily as a screaming eight year old child that didn’t get his ice cream.
I remember back in the day I thought differently about relationships. I recall saying that marriage was more of a life stage than an active choice (Stupid idea, and also incredibly offensive?). Oh how wrong that was. I get it now. I get what it is supposed to feel like. Of safety, of joy. Of pulling the frozen massage roller out of the freezer. Of going to our dedicated fun drinks store for fun drinks. Of countless yearly spontaneous trips to Calgary and the mountains. Of doing things with friends. Of leaving the house to do whatever. Of working out together. Cooking. Of me thinking logan was an asshole at first in gilmore girls, and now I am team logan as well. The dog jumping on the bed at incredibly in-opportune moments, making us unable to stop laughing.
It feels like never having to second guess a single thing. Like never second guessing yourself, either. It feels like the default action being for them. For us. It feels like not recognizing who you are in the mirror compared to two years ago, in the best possible way. It feels like the absence of hate, like the absence of anxiety, like to use the word trust is somehow inadequate because trust implies there was ever any doubt in the first place.
It feels like seven years bad examples can’t possible get in the way. It feels like maladaptive habits just slough off, as if all you ever had to do was just let go. It feels like my un-learning the little ways I am like my father that I do not want to replicate, and learning far more of the ways I do. It feels like becoming a man, not some sort of boy who thought for so long he was one.
I think, to some extent, it is the time that has done the growth. But I also think it was partially her, and the environment she made.
When you grow a plant, you do not touch the plant. You touch the soil. You change its components, you fertilize. You ensure that when that plant is inside that soil, rather than worrying about the plant itself, that the conditions are right for growth.
She gets every bit of care that needs.
And god damn, is she good soil for a man.