High Tide

Maybe it was the heat.  Maybe it was the stress of real workweeks.  Maybe it was a big deal, maybe it wasn’t.  With last month’s heat wave came a wave of stupid fights for Mike and me.  Our relationship has seen it’s share of real issues but these fights were far from anything of substance.  All of the little things finally culminated in a moment of realization for us both.  Summer brings about a whole new set of challenges for individuals, especially those who begin working at their first real job.  The world of school is enough to usually keep your insecurities and fears at bay but with a 9-5 job, you are left with evenings relatively free yet exhaustion keeps you close to home.  Those first few weeks I felt the need to grow up and to do it fast.  I won’t speak for Mike but maybe he felt the same way.

Instead of appreciating each other’s constancy and comfort, we made some poor decisions.  We took out our frustration and exhaustion on the person whom we knew we could.   In that moment we took each other for granted.  But it was also a moment of pure honesty and beneath that, an unexpected relief.  It was not a situation that was too far gone, thankfully it was perfectly timed where we were both ready to modify our actions.  Since then all of the little fights dissipated and so much less has been taken for granted.

This situation hit me with perspective just recently.  Life is rarely predictable.  Some people relish in this fact and others are less comfortable (take a wild guess which category this hero and heroine of this story fall into).  Either way, changes happen and the way we deal with those changes make us who we are.  Often people deal by hurting those they love the most instead of treasuring those relationships.  I know this idea isn’t groundbreaking, but it was for me.  And seeing how relatively easy it was to correct has been greatly comforting.  I don’t want to tag this post as “life lesson #_”.  Rather I like to think of this episode as if life was a 6'7" man weighing 300 pounds (think Las Vegas bouncer), and he picked me up by the shoulders and shook me (dare I say "us"?) into clarity.  Tough love but good love.

“The world is spinning turning day to night, And my thoughts are running at the speed of light, Got an empty feeling that I never wanna fill”