The Long Road Home.

Tuesday marked the official last day of our Ohio adventure and we took to the road for a long, arduous nearly nine hour excursion for Memphis, Tennessee; our halfway point back home to Dallas. 

The night before was New Year's Eve, the end of a long and (sometimes) hard and (sometimes) beautiful 365 days. I have never been big on plans for ringing in the new year. Something about screaming "Happy New Year" along with a hundred other intoxicated  and sweaty strangers has never really appealed to me. My New Year was rung in virtually alone, sitting on the chaise lounge in my Aunt's living room that I'd kind of marked as my own during our week long stint there, watching New Yorker's tick down the last seconds of 2012. Right as they hit the .30 second mark, my cousin and girlfriend and my...fiancé sauntered in to watch the ball drop. 

Before they all unceremoniously walked in, I was pretty positive I'd be watching the New Year roll in all on my own...

..which left me feeling very sad. 

I should have been spending New Years Eve wrapped in the strong and capable arms of my gorgeous fiancée. We just couldn’t seem to get it together. One fight on the 26^th and we kept it going right on up until after 2013 started.

Why do we do those things to ourselves in relationships? Why do we find it easier and more satisfying to hold out until the other one apologizes instead of just talking it out immediately and moving on, happily together?

I have always had a bad habit of not being able to truly verbalize how I am feeling when I get hurt. I am super sensitive and instead of talking about how I feel when I feel it, I tend to just sweep it on under the proverbial carpet because….well, I get hurt so easily. Why bring it up ALL the time? If I said something every time I felt stung, it would be monotonous, right?

My mate tries very hard – at everything.

In the span of two years, he has taken a long and arduous journey on the path to self awareness, self preservation, learning true self worth, figuring out what works and what doesn’t work. He has done all of this while also embarking on a relationship with me – and I am probably the hardest battle yet.

Being in a relationship with me cannot ever be easy. I have a hard time being in a relationship with myself, let alone how another actual person feels. I am needy, bleed insecurity…I have “I am not good enough” plastered across my forehead. I set up endless rows of hoops for my mate to jump through. They get high, they get low, they are ringed with fire or impossibly small to fit through. And if you can get through all of those hoops well…there are other trapeze acts to follow before I will accept the fact that you love me.

How he puts up with me, I don’t know.

How I put up with him sometimes, I don’t know.

My mate is also not easy. Not in the slightest. He is a dreamer, and dreamers…well, they dream. They dream big. And everything to a dreamer is a dream. The scared and apathetic person that lives inside of me not only envies the dreamers of the world, but is also terrified of them. How can you dream? How can you set goals so high and expect to achieve them? And then how are you okay with yourself when you don’t achieve them? Things like that are crushing to a self loathing creature like myself.

My mate has an addictive personality. He will get fixated on something and run with it. My mate is a recovering alcoholic who can become moody, critical, unforgiving. Moments like that – like the moment I was experiencing as the ball dropped – make me feel like a small and scared child. Or like the teenager sitting in the back of the classroom while everyone else sits up front having fun and being engaged.

My mate also has the ability to make me feel as if I am the most beautiful, intoxicating creature he has ever come across in all of his days on Earth.

What damages those moments (which are the majority of our relationship) is my inability to accept the adoration.

I fear that I am killing that adoration by not accepting it. The thought terrifies me.

My mate gave me a chaste kiss on the top of my head for New Years. Our inability to communicate and move past things…our stubbornness…the terrible way I deal with things, it can sometimes be suffocating. We always seem to hurt the ones we love the most.

It has never been that I don’t know how to apologize. It has also never been that I am too stubborn. I think that others perceive my fear as stubbornness. When I am fighting with someone, I have no problem verbally slashing someone apart. My words are my weapons. It’s where I feel comfortable. But afterwards, no matter who was right or who was wrong, I feel terrified that I will be chastised and my apology will not be accepted. I feel ashamed for having stuck up for myself. I should be able to take everything, shoulder everything. I should – after all of the things I have gone through – be able to control my feelings and not be so sensitive. I don’t say a word. I allow the other person to come to me. Not because I don’t want things to be amended, God no…I hate conflict more than anyone else in this world. Conflict settles like a twisty and dark monster right in the pit of my stomach and eats me from the inside until it is resolved. I obsess over it. No, I don’t say a word because I am terrified of more rejection….

…I sometimes wonder if because the world was shifted onto my slight shoulders when I was 12 years old, that all of the adjusting I did to carry it stunted my emotional growth.

I react to things like a 12 year old. I handle my emotions and deal with difficult situations in such a way that most people do not understand me at all. I take everything personally; I remember everything people say to me, I am always looking for the dark side of things. I hate that about myself. It’s something I need to change…I need to learn to grow up emotionally. Right?

On the road we started, on New Years Day. 01-01-2013 (have to use those zeros as place markers) Neither of us talking to one another made for an extremely long 7 hours. When the silence begins to fill up the space between you, you finally realize how much there is. You can be so close to one another, but still miles apart.

Feeling connected to my mate is such a part of me. He does not define me, he does not complete me. He does not make me feel whole or give me relevance. What he does do, is enhance my life. He makes everything sharper, brighter, louder. Everything that surrounds him is magnified. He makes my world noisy, but that’s what I need.

I need to appreciate him. More. And I will.