Samson

"He came home to surprise me. Maybe I'd already started to acclimate to life on my own, maybe there's some other reason beyond my understanding and awareness, but I felt frustrated at the physical/mental/emotional difficulty that my life (still) caused him, at the fact that I'm not even organized enough to be able to make a grocery list, let alone remember to take it with me to the store. I was dismayed at how rapidly our interactions degraded into the day to day drudgery that we'd been stuck in before he left, that I was so glad to break free of, even though I knew it would mean missing him every day. I was graced with a week, no, two with him, and I completely took it for granted. I could try to blame it on stress, or work, or any number of possibly imaginary factors. I think it's more likely that I interrogate our relationship tirelessly, relentlessly.... the guys at Guantanamo have nothing on me. I've turned it upside down, strangled its wrists, pounded questions at it for hours, deprived it of nourishment, and left it naked and starving in a solitary cell, not knowing that the only answers to the questions I presented would have to come from inside myself."


He followed me back. He did it because he knew, despite my denials, that I couldn't hold it together on my own. If I had presented a stronger defense, been more convincing somehow, put my foot down where I'm used to it being, the outcome would have been drastically different. Being that I could not, he has propped me upright and propelled me forward. Yes, it's been mostly my own muscles doing the work, making the strides, but without the rod in my spine, I would have soon crumpled into a writhing heap on the floor. We're moving. No, we're leaving, and if he hadn't followed me back, it would never have happened. When I realized that I couldn't (easily) talk him out of it, a feeling of exhaustion like a brick wall which my arguments to the contrary could not overcome, I let go. Of what? Probably my pride. Germans, as a rule, don't do it very often, and it was quite possibly yet another example of the universe exerting its force on the outcome of the events that ensued.

When we got home from that awful, defining adventure, I realized something: We are a team. We're partners, and we're there to take care of each other, to have the other's back when wanted, needed or when it's understood to be needed, but denied to be so. I noticed a difference in the way that I saw him from that point on. While I'm still nervous about the future away from the only place I've ever lived, I'm only nervous. I'm not the only engine for this ship anymore, I don't have to be forged from iron and crafted without flaw. I can be human again. And that is an incredible gift, one that he may not even know he's giving me. Will I grow in that new place? Thrive? Flourish? You have no idea.