Tonight, I don’t have to write. I get to write. I feel lighter and freer than I have in a decade, because I am finally making progress in a direction that seems healthy.
I told Supergrover to step up or take it somewhere else.
She stepped up.
She didn’t even have to say “I’m stepping up.” She talked about her end of the string. So many tears of joy, doing the “I won” dance for real this time and not just trying to ramp each other up. We finally have the kind of love where I said, “do you want to fix this? I think you’re saying yes.”
She said, “it is fixable in my view.”
I told her about some really big dreams that started the moment I asked her what she wanted our relationship to look like in 20 years. I told her how it took me a while to relax into it because it was so uncomfortable to get rid of the brain gremlins that come with someone turning your head where it’s just crazy talk, but your brain doesn’t know that. Really big dreams, and she thanked me for accepting her just the way she is, and that she wants to do the same for me. Her tone and approach was exactly what I was talking about on my blog- laying out your problems as if you actually like me, not treating me like my opinion is law and something to fight against. We are so much more effective at tackling a problem together.
I sent her an e-mail that said I’d forgiven her and moved on, because I realized that I never asked her what she was trying to accomplish. What was her real goal if it wasn’t to piss me off? She really took a hard look at herself in a way I’ve never seen her do before.
If every lid has a pot, the caveat is that sometimes the metal has to be stretched occasionally. It’s the stretch marks that make it valuable.
There was no blame. None. Just talking it out. Like, “how did it get so shitty?” Real talk. Like we haven’t done in years. The woman I love hasn’t disappeared into the ether. She’s still a ghost that smokes in the back of my head, but mostly because it’s from a Lisa Loeb song, not that she’s stuck there anymore.
I remember saying in “Go Tell the Bees” that I just wanted to be hers, no matter what that meant.
Apparently, that is fixable in her view.
…and they all lived happily ever after.
Except you’ll get to see it in real time, because my girl likes seeing how my brain works. It’s not a happy ending for me. It’s a happy ending to a really great story….. one so unusual and oddly specific to its time period that I hope it has appealed to you. To my fans that have stuck with me through hell or high water, I know it got repetitive. But especially in the thick of it (2023), it took me six novels’ worth of blog entries (614,000 words according to year end stats) to figure out my directions and my distractions.
The reason it’s different this time is that Supergrover decided to cut all the shit and just be real in the most beautiful, poignant way possible. I love that she is holding onto our yellow string, like when she is flying and I hold onto her tail.
Wait. That probably sounded better in my head.
😉
Stories That Are All True 