Life, Laughter, and Construction

   Lately, I have been thinking a lot about relationships. Relationships of all kinds. Family relationships, friendly relationships, and well...REAL relationships. I took a trip to Tennenesse. I got back to Michigan yesterday. I thought about a lot of things while I was gone. Maybe it was the constant reminders of my past life there, the friends left behind, the hopes and dream that fell through and the marriage that was born and died in that very city. Maybe it was my mind just needing to decompress.

   On my long drive down, I decided that life is like the highway. You're always on a jounry. It doesn't matter where you are going, there are bumps in the road. Truth is, sometimes there is construction and you feel completely stuck. I feel like- right now in my life, I'm stuck in construction... Bumper to bumper....stop and go....unsure of my destination. In life, just like in construction, we may take a detour, we may make a wrong turn...but eventually we will end up, exactly where we are supposed to be...right? I sure hope so.

   Thinking about all of this quickly lead my mind to evaluate relationships, and their effects on your life. I think that the relationships we choose to hold somewhat define the direction of our lives. Okay, maybe not define...but they greatly affect our day to day.

   I enjoy the kind of love that comes easy. Uplifting, pleasent, simple love. But the truth is, nothing about love is ever simple. In my marriage, I struggled a lot with the issues of trust. I was always the kind of person that said, once you loose trust, YOU CAN get it back...I said things like..It just takes time...or if we both work on it, we will get past this. The truth is, once complete trust is gone, there is no getting it back. You spend so much time dealing with the effects of the lack of trust, that you never get around to working on rebuilding it. I had faith in "the fairytale". The one that ended with happily ever after. Disney never mentioned that "ever after" meant after the messy divorce, the splitting and dividing of assets and debts, and the signature on the dotted line stating that you were no longer married. Happily ever after doesn't exist. The perfect marriage doesn't exist, but the truth is- Real, true love...it exists. The love that grows old and lasts forever. I have not lost hope. I have simply realized that sometimes in life we fall in love, and it feels like a forever kind of thing, but in the end, maybe that love was a stepping stone, a life lesson, to get you to where you are supposed to go. And if that's not true, then maybe the truth is we just fucked up along the way and our choices made it so that this love would not last forever.

  I think for me these last couple months have been more about learning then about anything else. Love seemed so simple to me growing up. I knew what love was, and I knew I felt it, so everything else was just there. I felt that when you loved someone, no amount of bullshit mattered, you still loved them and you stuck it out. I always did my best to make him happy. I would sacrafice anything for his happiness. I thought that's what a good wife did. What I didn't realize, that sacraficing my happiness was causing me to loose myself, and if I wasn't myself, I wasn't the person he fell in love with.

   Love is a game of give and take. And I see now that sometimes you give so much that you are ultimitly taking away from not only yourself, but your partner too. Sometimes I think you just have to let go. You have to allow yourself to grow and change, and if in the end the trust, the hope, the faith...the laughter is gone...You give up and you both allow eachother to move on and find happiness.

   That's the most important lesson I have learned- Not only about love, but about life. I am the kind of person who loves to laugh. I get satisfaction from the smiles on the faces of the people I care most about. So in the days of my marriage where no smiles were presant, and life was a constant routine of muck, I wish I would have realized what was happening. Instead I forced an imagine in my mind of this perfect marriage and perfect family that would someday be. But the truth is, once your marriage is so far gone, you can't get it back. You have to work at a marriage, every single day. You have to be involved in the happiness and love it takes to make a marriage work. And I think there were times when I THOUGHT I was involved, but I was simply hoping that tomorrow would be better.

   My husband was not happy for a while. He pushed me away, and I was the kind of person who let it happen. I never stood my ground. I, instead convinced myself that someday we would get back to the way we were when we first married. I told myself that someday he would again be an active part in this. But the truth is I was telling myself lies. I did what I was supposed to do. I cleaned, I cooked, I smiled, I took him lunch, I made the bed...well most days atleast. But in the end, I did not stop to realize what we were loosing, little by little. We spent so much time worrying about not trusting eachother, and bickering over the little things, that we lost the laughter then once drew us together.

   And so now I have come to realize this: I am the kind of person who likes to laugh. I never want to be with someone I can't laugh with every single day. In ever relationship, there are troubles, and problems, and arguments. There are days when you want to just be left alone, and days when you want to cry, but at the end of the day, I want to be able to laugh with my lover. No matter how angry we may be, or how shitty our day was. Life is far to short to convince yourself that tomorrow will be better. I feel like the sun should never set on an argument, because you are not promised tomorrow. So from now on I am requiring laughter out of every relationship.

   In conclusion, I have come to find this... Everyone deserves to be happy. You only get ONE life, and it's way to short to be unhappy. I never want someone else to sacrafice their happiness for mine. I know that, in order to be politiclly correct, or IDEAL, we are supposed to get married once, have children, raise them in a happy home. But who wants to be politiclly correct, at the risk of their own happiness? I don't think children raised in a home that is forced or fake will be any happiner then children raised in two happy homes. I want my kids to know happiness, laughter and love. Happiness, laughter and love that are genuine and real, not politiclly correct. Life is not always what you think it ought to be. Sometimes you have to make a wrong turn, or take a detour. Sometimes you have to let go no matter how much it hurts, and sometimes you have to have faith in taking that leap. Because at the end of the day, I'd rather see someone I love happy without me, then unhappy with me.

   Trust, Love, and Devotion cannot be faked, cannot be forced, and cannot be found, once they are gone. In love, just like in construction, we have to know when to take the nearest exit, and when to stick it out for the ride.


--AA