2019

Here it is, 2019.  And here I sit, writing something for my long-ago forgotten blog, one I used to keep up with vigor, and now is a ghost of my past.  And there is almost certainty that nobody reads this anymore, so here, I will type.


As the New Year is upon us, I am so looking forward to a fresh start and a proverbial clean slate.  I can almost feel it, and if wet, white paint and its accompanying fumes had a feeling, that would be it.  New beginnings and habits (haha), new focus, purging of things we don't need, rebuilding things broken long ago, and looking forward to all the good that is coming.  Because it is.


2018 was not our year.  It could have been, I suppose, if we would have made different choices, parented better, communicated better, made any sort of effort to understand each other, and tried our hardest not to just live parallel to one another.  But Adam and I?  We didn't do that.  We spent our twelfth anniversary in a blow-out fight, which is actually perfect because it sums up who we were last year.  Stubborn, arrogant, full of solutions ONLY if those solutions left one of us the victor and the other the wrong-doer.  Oh, hindsight.


And though we weren't heading toward the D-word, for the first time in our marriage, it was easy to imagine us there.  That idea would keep me up choking on my thoughts at night.  And there were reasons we were in the shape we were.  My focus wasn't on us, but on helping family members who needed me more.  I lent out our home and my time and gave away our money the better part of the year, and Adam didn't understand how anyone else could have slid into my #1 priority slot.  I couldn't understand what he couldn't see.  I was giving every ounce I had of myself away, and how could he not see that I needed more from him?  But he was annoyed, angry, unhappy at my distance.  I was hurt, even more angry, and resentful that he couldn't do what I was doing, and slowly, we just quit talking. 


And if you know Adam and me, that isn't like us.  We're loving and affectionate, we talk several times a day.  We send ridiculous texts to each other just to get a laugh. We LOVE each other, in the verb-iest sense of that word.  And I don't know when things changed, probably gradually, definitely peaking and plateauing sometime around July 4th, and finally settled down now.  Now, at the end of the year.  Now, with new beginnings ahead of us. 


It took nothing at all from us.  Mostly a tearful, "I don't want to be mad at you all the time," and something in Adam changed.  It wasn't dramatic.  Not some big talk or resolution.  Just a simple, "I need you to show up."  And so, he did.  Because if there is anything I know about Adam, it's that he loves us.  He does.  Sometimes, he forgets to remember and sometimes he forgets to show it, but I know he does.  And he's shown up every single day.  Sometimes, he'll fold a load of laundry.  Other times, come lay next to me on the couch when he knows I'm already half asleep.  "This year is our year," he said on New Year's Day.  Maybe it is.  "Maybe we should renew our vows," he said. 


And I laughed.  "Maybe we should see how this year goes." 


Happy New Year, to those who will probably never read this.  May your fresh, wet, white-painted beginnings be as beautiful as you imagine. 


Love.