This Is What Being In A Relationship Truly Means, Because Sometimes The Fights Are Hard AF

There was hurt. There was hurt, and a lot of reconciling that needed to happen, but I let him move into my tiny apartment anyway. We were on a path, and at some point, it’s unstoppable. You hear about these things; about people who meet and hurt each other, and unmeet, and talk, and then soon you’re sharing a toothbrush and all you can really think is, “did I just wash his underwear?” But there are occasional moments of silence where there is a thought, and the thought is unpleasant. You wonder if you’ve gone crazy, or if the synapses in your mind are firing at a million pulses per second and everything you’re thinking is imagined. He isn’t the man who you thought he was; who he was when you first met. He’s someone different and… He’s the person you imagined him to be before. Now, it’s all real. Or is it imagined? Your mind hasn’t caught up with your brain and the sensory experience of him in your bed, inside you, in your kitchen washing dishes. At this point, it’s a mind-body conflict, and you are at the center of the war. Which one will win out? Which one will convince the other to accept; to concede and allow something to unfold.

Lose control. That’s what this all boils down to. You must lose control. You must let go of the thought that it is what it was before. You must allow yourself the freedom that comes with an exhalation. The exhalation comes from knowing what has changed. There are things that have changed and things that have remained the same. You know the difference and yet you wait for one to change. What is it that changes? Is it the thing that changes or the thing that remains the same? Because the parts that remain the same at some point were different in your mind. Then there is your mind. It’s the mind-body conflict and it becomes the central part to the story.

The story unfolds before you, and inside you. You are the story. You are the ones creating the story. In front of you is another person who you are sharing an existence with between four simple walls of a tiny apartment. He is the one in front of you who makes you feel like you are unstoppable, but before, there was a stop. There was a time before when you started, and then you stopped. You have a hard time separating the two, but you are determined to get rid of the stop. You are determined to go with the go and make the stop part of the past. You work it out in your mind. You remind yourself of what you remembered it to be; the pieces of a person you used to know. A person you used to know who has turned up in a different form. He was a piece of the puzzle that you created in your mind the last time, and now he’s back to actualize it. You have all the pieces that you need for a complete picture, and you are putting it back together. You are the glue. You are the jagged edges that fit perfectly. Somehow it fits perfectly.

Perfect isn’t what you need. Day after day, and it’s not perfect, and you’re OK. There’s nothing to prove to you but you. You can’t deny the way it feels. You can’t believe that it feels the way it feels, but you continue through the feelings. You reach inside yourself for the pieces you need to complete the imperfect puzzle. It fits. It all fits, even though it never did before. Reconciliation never feels like it felt before, but it brings you to a place that you never were before. No one will be who they were, but everyone is who they are. This is what you learn about him, and you learn about yourself. Everyone is working toward building the thing that makes them feel complete, and when you find the pieces that fall into place, you don’t waste time searching for ways to make them break.