Everything and nothing

It seems not so long ago when I thought five years with the same person was an eternity. It’s odd how years pass. It seems like it should have felt harder, but they just flow, softly, calmly passing. Paying you no more mind than the clouds wandering across the sky. You think they’re your years, but they’re no more yours than anything else in life. We are just guests. On good days, I like looking back at the simplicity under all the turmoil. It was always so hard, living with him. I needed so much more than he had to give me. Needed to give more than he wanted from me. I always wondered if he’d have had those things for someone else who didn’t need them quite so much, wanted what someone else had to give. If we’d have been better people with other people. When the last child left, there was this almost comical waiting. Waiting to see if one of us was going to say they were done and confirm that we’d only stayed together for the kids. But time did that thing it does. It passed. Hours became days became weeks became months. I said once I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself now. He said “you could think of me.” He had no idea he’d been living rent free in my head from the first day he knocked on my door. I didn’t say anything. Couldn’t. I don’t know why all the pain and frustration and loneliness never managed to kill it. I thought for a while it had, but after that sense of waiting faded, he seemed to make a choice to relax and enjoy living with me. To care, and I found that same warmth that could rush over me in waves once upon a time was still there. Could set aside years of disappointment and let today be free of their shadow. Not the lessons of them, but their shadow. I know who he is. What he has for me and what he doesn’t. When I can count on him and when I can’t. There are more good days than bad ones now. On those days I’m glad I stayed. It’s interesting. I like the depth of it, the history, the organic connection of nothing more complex than so many shared memories. I’m glad I got to experience that. On the bad days, staying feels like a failure, and then I go do something that makes me happy because all the bad days before taught me how to do that without him. None of it matters really. My happiness. My tears. I lived, and I have loved this life I got to borrow. A fortunate guest.