Femiphobia Continued

Part 2 of a story I am writing titled Femiphobia....

I just can't seem to bring my hand down on the regrets box. I had a flash back of junior high, check “yes” if you love me, “no” if you don't. Before I could think anymore, I checked yes, plus one. I ran back downstairs and dropped it in the outgoing mail before I could change my decision. On my way back up I realized my error. Plus one! What was I thinking? Was I really thinking that I'd have someone worthwhile to bring with me in just a few short months? It was bad enough I checked “yes” I love you...but did someone really have to come along for the humiliation? This wasn't a class reunion. I didn't need to prove how successful I'd been in the last eight years. “Yes, hello, congrats on your marriage, the ceremony was beautiful, and yes, this man next to me is my date. I had to pay him to come along because I was afraid you'd think I was pathetic and alone. That, and I didn't know if you would allow my cat to come.” I mean, sure, that may not be as bad as going alone. There isn't much more I hate than sitting at a table full of people I don't know, tinkling my glass for someone to make out in front of me that I know won't even remember I came. Well, at least past the point of “so glad you could make it” and then later when they write the thank you card for the impersonal gift off of their registry. As if I just happened to guess what the color of towels they would love to have in their bathroom.

I finished off my tea, now cold, telling myself to forget about the invitation and the impending doomsday celebration. I should be thankful, I could be a bridesmaid and have to spend every weekend until the wedding thinking, talking and prepping for that day. My checklist was much shorter. Find a dress, a date, and a gift. A date? This could possibly require as much preparation as the entire courtship and engagement story of the future wedded couple. I caught a glimpse of my reflection again, and stopped to peer closer. Starting with my hair, eyebrows and cleansing routine. This is the trouble with relationships.

Now, in the world of women, the perfect story line to my dilemma would be for me to go to the wedding alone, meet Mr. Perfection, who just happened to not be able to find a plus one as well. We would dance the night away, oblivious to the drunken line dancing and chicken dances, because new romance and wedding magic would be spiking the very air that we'd breathe. Or another acceptable story, would be Ms. Bride to call, she had received my RSVP and would continue to tell me about her maid of honor who contracted a contagious disease, incapacitating her through the date of the wedding. She would beg me to fill in, ironically tying me to the wedding every weekend until the ceremony. But again the story would end happily, despite annoyances and misunderstandings along the way. The best man would be single and amazing and we'd live happily ever after. Of course, first we'd fight publicly and he'd chase me down, probably in a cab, and it would rain. But still would end happily. Unfortunately my life is not written by overpaid screen writers. There will be no regurgitated story line with different half-baked but beautiful talent for all of us heart starved women. My life, well, it doesn't seem to be written at all, just absently and tragically shaped by my decisions based on past and jaded experiences.

I wonder what is wrong with me sometimes. Why I have built these walls so thick that people can cause a small panic attack when they get too close. It reminds me of those signs at the zoo, warning parents to not let their children wander off alone, not to feed the animals, or get too close to the bars. If they get too close, will I end up hurting them? Or being the one who is hurt?

Secretly I hold out for some of those lost friendships. Its usually the ones that hurt the most that are the hardest to let go. Its amazing how some friendships that end hurt as badly as if you were in love. Sometimes I like to lay in bed and daydream that I run into one of those lost persons again. They ask how I am, and then once the small talk is out of the way, we dive into regrets and forgiveness and how we've been unable to function without each other. The pain we caused each other seems to disappear, because we know that we are kindred hearts that are meant to be together. And there is joy, and I can once again be myself on the outside. Whether its the little girl that is real, or someone else I'd like to be, they won't leave. And the insecurities no long incapacitate me, and tears of loneliness are not wet on my face, and are not leaving pools on my pillow. But I realize that the tears are there, and the loneliness is as sharp as when I began to daydream, and that person will never be there again. They wouldn't even answer if I called.

I always had such high expectations for myself. But now I am a cold, paralyzed, mediocre woman who is afraid of people. Or even to go to a wedding alone. What has happened to the expectation? I always knew I had potential, but as I get older, potential is not enough. Potential should be turning into results, dreams should be moving from abstract and into reality. But I am average, and scared, and hurt, and alone.

I put a magnet to the wedding invitation. I wash my breakfast dishes, refill my cup with more tea, and wonder what I should do next. Flipping through my contacts in my cellphone, I try to choose someone to call. If ever I am going to get out of this mediocrity, I am going to have to do something to change it. There has to be someone with whom I could have a clean slate. Someone who doesn't know what I've done, or not done. I snap the phone shut in frustration. Maybe I should volunteer, take a class, what does one do when they have purpose in their life?

Maybe I just needed to enjoy life more. Life begins to become so scheduled, planned and expected, perhaps I needed to stop and smell life, even if it wasn't much like roses and more like the food smell in the hallway.

It didn't seem like I was going to be able to solve my life's disappointment in one morning, so I began to accomplish my checklist. Life's tasks were always something I could count on and control. Laundry and dishes and grocery shopping filled the rest of my day, but still there was a nagging sense that there had to be more to come home to. More to do in my life. I smiled at clerks, and made polite conversation, but the scared little girl was sick of hiding. I was tired of pretending everything was okay and making sure that I was socially unobtrusive.

Throughout the day I would automatically respond to inquiries to my state of being with I'm fine, and you? This would only make me more frustrated. Why do I say I'm doing well, when I'm not? Is it really because I don't think they'll want to know? Or am I afraid if I crack that door, ever so slightly, the whole rush of pain will come spilling out on them. What would they think of me if my crazy smeared itself all over their day?

I read somewhere that you should write a letter to someone to grieve a past relationship, to say goodbye. Something about the therapeutic qualities of truth being put into words. You never send the letter, you just write it for yourself. I always thought that sounded strange, and scary. As silly as it sounds, what if someone read it? What if they knew it was about them? Would it just reinforce my pity party? But being completely fed up with myself, I decided to sit down and write my letters. And so I began apologizing to each and every person that I had let down, that had in turn hurt me. And so, to my friends, I'm sorry I've hurt you, I'm sorry if you see yourself in these letters. I'm sorry if you read this, but I need to forget you. I need you to leave my daydreams, my hopes need to be dashed that you'll ever care again, that you'll ever answer my call. Hope is a perilous companion. I'm not sure if I can let go, but I'm afraid that I'll never trust anyone again if I don't kill the hope of your friendship. I will change your names, so maybe you can fool yourself that it is about someone else. Or so others won't know how horrible our time as friends has been.

Dear Jackie,

I hate you. I hate that you turned my friends against me. I knew that you were all whispering lies, and for what? For a guy. If it was for revenge, I do not know for what you were paying me back. You're married now, probably having babies, he's married too, and you are not married to each other. And I don't speak to either of you now.

You e-mailed me a few years back, saying we should get together someday soon. As if nothing had happened. You stole two of my best friends. And yes, you were one of them. You were the friend who allowed me to be myself. Or so I thought. I told you the secrets of every dark corner in my life. With you I could be crazy, and happy and carefree. Absolutely ridiculous, and I loved you for that.

I know I hurt him, and you pounced on the opportunity to be the better woman. You added salt to his wound, and told him that the salt was from me. You preyed on his anger and his frustration. And you began to believe the lies you shared. You told my secrets, the darkest stories that later I had to act incredulous about. I lied. I told them you were trying to steal him away so you made up stories. And I was so ashamed, that the stories were real, that I had trusted you.

And now you are happy, married, and I'm assuming he is happy, and married. And I look back on that day that changed our friendships. I was a terrible person, controlling and impatient, but you loved him and yourself more than you loved me. You pounced on my imperfections and capitlized on them for your gain. I don't think you intended to, not at first. But once you started, it became easier. I believe you truly were listening to my secrets and cried with me when I told you, not maliciously storing the information for your gain, but when the opportunity presented itself, I had given you all of the ammunition you needed.

I loved him. For years we danced through loving each other at opposite moments, for years it went on. And you pounced. I will write to him as well, and I will forgive him, because I know he just couldn't handle the pain anymore and for that I do not blame him. But I blame you. And no, I don't think we should get together someday soon. I will not fake a smile for you. Congratulations on your marriage. I hope you will ride away into the sunset together. So far away that I never see you again.

Sincerely,

Me.

Dear Boy that I loved,

I never knew if we were meant to be or not. It seemed that we were. We each lived through watching other people take our time and love, but when we loved each other, the times never seemed to coincide. Until one day they did, but then a half of a breath later, you chose her, over me, because I think we both knew we would just hurt each other again, but with her...there was always that chance. I am sorry that I was so oblivious. I am sorry I played those games. I'm sorry I lost your friendship. You were my innocence. You were the real thing. And I took you for granted, searched the faces and hearts of others for the love that was always right in front of me.

But you hurt me too. And most of all, knowing that you are happy without me, and I am alone, that is what makes me so angry with you. And you believed all of those lies that Jackie told you. She gave you the final nail in the coffin of our relationship. To think you believed the worst of me. You, the one that really knew my heart. Well dear friend, I am sorry, and I say goodbye. You will always haunt my daydreams.

With regret,

Me

Femiphobia

A story that I am starting....tell me what you think! Or if you have a desire to where to story should go! I always need ideas.

To my friends, I am sorry. I beg your forgiveness for who I am. I have disappointed you, or scared you, or offended you until you've all slipped away. And for that I am grieved. I am sorry that your love was not unconditional. I'm sorry that your perfection could not play with my tainted spirit. Maybe I deserved you with your lack of patience, and understanding. Sowing what I was reaping, but still, I am sorry that you left, and despite my faults, I still love you.

Friends, lovers, neighbors, classmates, all the relationships that are meant to come and go; but do they have to go so quickly? I find myself, now thirty years old, unable to have hope in new relationships. I'm afraid that soon I'll be the cat lady, people finding me too eccentric to fit into their schedule. I am left with aching memories and an album of bitter snapshots.

I've heard from many women a familiar story of pain from the circling vultures called female friends. But can you be friends with a creature that preys on the death of others? Femiphobia, how ridiculous that we have to fear our own kind. But for me, I have a fear of all relationships, male or female. On the outside, when needed, I can be socially acceptable, gregariously outgoing, but inside the little girl shrinks in fear at the outstretched hand or welcoming hello. And God forbid the probing questions of how that little girl feels or her opinion on the world's events. I try to protect her with small talk and shallow bits and pieces of myself, but inevitably someone always tries to get too close, and I have to quickly excusing us, the big girl on the outside and the small girl crying on the inside, to the restroom, or to the other side of the room where there is another person I just remembered I need to speak with immediately.

This morning is like many other mornings. I have the day off and my list is a mile long of things to eat up my time, but I find myself lethargic and nostalgic. I see pictures from when I used to be the center of attention, the breath and life to the party, and I wonder how I fooled them all to ignore my faults back then. I make myself a cup of tea, a dash of milk, half a spoon of sugar and stare at my apartment. The tea burns my lips but is already in my mouth before I can stop it, and now my tongue is scalded as well. That is how I see my time with people. Warm and inviting, smelling of roses or mint, but once they get past my closed mouth they burn me from the inside.

The doorbell buzzes and I almost drop my cup. I glance in the mirror, hair pulled into a ponytail but still disheveled, no makeup. At least I had enough time to slip into some jeans and a sweater. Oh well, I open the door but the hall is empty. I look left, the smell of unidentifiable food and muffled television noise dancing around me, but all I can see is someone's coat and boots slipping out the front door. I look down, a package. I have the sharp childlike thrill of expectation and wonder at the brown box. I pick up the mystery, but when I see the return label, I remember the order I put in last week for some new books. And my Christmas moment is over. I close the door but the package reminds me I haven't gotten my mail in two days. The small mail box must be about to burst. I slip on some shoes, grab my keys and open the door to more smells, more daytime television. How can food smell so badly? I wonder if my neighbors really can't cook, or if its the hallway's fault for the offensive mixture of odor. I breathe through my mouth, creaking down the stairs until I get to the rows of garish gold boxes. My box is full, I assume with bills and other not very exciting surprises. I flip through the pile as I shuffle back upstairs. Bill, junk, bill, and oh, the unmistakable thick and expensive paper of an invitation. That's right, the season of weddings is approaching. I toss the pile on the counter and try to ignore the bulging envelope, pretty pink and pearl. Who is it this spring? The only thing more depressing are baby announcements. Wedding invitations usually just make me mad. People you haven't spoken to in years pay way too much money to kill way too many trees to make the perfect invitation for the people they know won't come. But hopefully, this expensive investment will at least reap for them a gift of cash, or at least the jealousy of all their former vultures. I mean friends. And if they are good enough friends or family to feel obligated to come, the pretty wrapping is thrown in the trash, the invitation stuck the refrigerator, partially covered with photos and grocery lists until the appropriate day it joins the rest of the expense in the trash. What a waste of money. Despite my cynicism, I know eventually I'll give in and tear through card stock and tissue paper.

In fact, I am already walking towards the counter and towards the sparkling paper. I am sick at myself and my morbid girl curiosity. I tear open the envelope, the pearl and pink's magical embossing reveals the name of a girl I knew from college. Which, by the way, I graduated from eight years ago. Two years longer than the last time I've seen her or heard her voice.

I start to throw the invitation in the trash when a pang of guilt overcomes me. What was I thinking, I should at least RSVP that I wouldn't be there. But if she thinks she's getting a gift, she's got another thing coming...I pick up a pen and the RSVP card, my hand wavering above the check box.

To be continued....

Battle Lines

The delicate balance of revolution and peace blurs more every day. We are taught our whole lives to love, to share, to live in tolerance, and always consider the opposite side of what seems so clear to us. Yet, we are also instructed to stand up to injustice, to declare our beliefs, to always hold that answer in our back pocket for the moment someone asks, why do you believe? Unfortunately it seems that too often the answer has been stuffed in that pocket for so long, so folded and creased, so worn on its edges, that when it is pulled out it is presented as deflated and flat. And like a wobbly Jenga game, we hope they don't see the piece that is ready to be pulled free, the gap in our armor.

However, there are those rare moments when indignation forces itself through the plastic training, a nerve has been awakened, a belief has been prodded, and then a whirlwind begins. We are unprepared for the confrontation that feels so inevitable. It would be easier to keep silent. Yet, the pressure keeps building, the hours of sleep get shorter, and wondering is constant.

This is the torture that has wound its grimy hands around my neck. What is the most important of all values? Friendship? Respect? Support to authority? Or justice and truth? I know above all else we should live in love. But I see so little love. The line of revolution and peace gets more blurry while the battle line becomes clearer. I see that line and wonder what next? Do we sharpen our plows to swords, or continue to plod on, sowing the seed, leaving a trail of growth, hoping as we sweat the day away that others will follow? Both require a breathtaking amount of sacrifice.

And then I return to love, and patience and being a living example, keeping fresh the answer for anyone who asks. No creases or soiled and unused answers. I continue to cry out for wisdom, and for strength, because the silent battle is the hardest to fight. It rages not only against the transgression, but also against myself and the desire to give up the fight, the fight of leading the way with love.

A Personal Revolution

Sometimes in my mind I go somewhere great. The verse of a well written song takes me away and my thoughts deceive me that this isn't my sofa that I'm sitting on, and the pile of dishes don't exist. The warm coffee sitting next to me excites my smell and raises my pulse with its caffeine,with a strangely calming familiarity. I feel creativity pushing against the normal boundaries, crying out for me to become extraordinary. But oh, what do I do next?

The idea of living out the change that is so desperately calling is so much easier to dream about than actually stepping outside my door. I wish I could pick up a trumpet and call the dissatisfied individuals to my front lawn. Maybe then we could encourage one another past the point of discussion and into the world of action.

Yet, the first battle to be won is against myself. I must find motivation, vision, conquer time management and the ability to silence the distracting din of those dirty dish moments.

The next hurdle is teaching, conversation, mentoring, and sharpening the iron in me against the iron of others. We forge a workable idea that is based in a deep relationship. But first comes the relationship, the time, the energy, the polite hellos and social gratuity that is required to bond deeply enough to begin to change the world. When we trust each other, when we've cried and shared and prayed and dreamed, talked and fought, and seen one another with bed head, a dirty house and in foul moods, then we can walk towards the ever elusive change. I'm exhausted already. And the dreamy lyrics have died away, the caffeine is crashing, and I don't know how to play the trumpet.

I want to be inspiring, but that can only be done with a family of revolutionaries to walk with me every day. This is what I long for in community. To give and to be given to, so that we can become all that God has planted deep inside of us. If eternity is written on our hearts, then why are we so fearful to live by them?

People Collection

He had sad eyes; the edges turning watery and crimson as emotion scraped at his voice. I stored up his face and the brief part of his story that greedily ate up my time. His mess splashed onto my empty day, smearing my memory with this moment captured forever in my subconscious.

Life has always been about collections for me. As a child I watched what my older sisters collected to know how to pattern my own hordes of treasure. They had to have known what was valuable; they were older. So I gathered the usual: stamps, coins, marbles and added a few of my own: rocks, bugs and pine cones. We moved when I when I was nine and my mother made me downsize. I've been emptying my pockets ever since.

Several years ago I began to collect people, or parts of people through the random parts that they slough off of themselves. They pack better than rocks. I never know why they choose me. I wonder if its random or if someone whispered my secret- that I would collect their memories and preserve them. Usually through the course of the conversation they stop in bewilderment, wondering why they are talking to me. Sometimes they look at me accusingly, questioning how I invaded this private memory.

Norman, or the one with the sad eyes, was so uncertain when I met him. He was wavering between worlds of decisions, weights of pain straining down on his tired shoulders. He lived in moderate poverty while his eldest son ignored his need and paid off other men's mortgages- in cash. He dwelt on suicidal notions as his youngest son bordered on sociopath, absently recalling the story of an idiot that blew off his face but couldn't even finish the job. He was always a selfish child. Norman shared that he too sometimes thought of suicide. His son has told him to make sure he aims right.

I think that the part of Norman that was my favorite to collect was his love. I remember his face as he remembered “a bit of a girl” that he went with in his thirties. He “should have married that girl”, he'd thought that ever since. Regret, a tantalizing emotion, sweet as they remember what they've loved, and bitter as they realize that it is no longer there. I feel as if I'm peering in a wound as they live through it all again, all in the speed of a breath.

Norman told me how he'd poured all he had into his boys. He was their punching bag as he taught them to box, their teacher as he taught them to carve out usefulness with their hands. He gave them what he could, allowed them their stubborn mistakes, watching them occasionally coming back to the answer he'd invested in them. He always wanted them to surpass him in every way. His eyes had teared again as he wondered what had gone wrong, and then proud resolve would try to return as he told me that if nothing else he had taught them to defend their women. Whether they won or not was not important, just that they stood up. He told me he guessed that's what it was all about. Even if for him there was no longer a woman and the one that had been worth the fight had left forty years ago.

While we talked he would forget what I had showed him five minutes earlier, yet the past seventy years were as clear as if he'd just lived them. He said he was just old and confused. I think the past just pushed out the trivial present.

He shook as his back grew tired, the cane unable to give him strength. He would sit his punished body into a chair, the pack of cigarettes bulging in his t-shirt pocket. Now he punished his mind and heart and none of the pain could save him. I can't save him either, but I will store away his pain.

Great Expectations? Or Greater Disappointments?

Expectations are a frightening companion to the events of life. Without them, experience is more like an intake of breath in a musty attic, leaving your life void of enough oxygen to make the action worthwhile. With them, it is like playing a bad game show of guessing what's behind door number three. The odds of it being a sports car is unlikely and you're not sure if the thrill of the chance is worth the disappointment of it being a quilted tea cozy. A gamble of the dice.

There's a pool of thought that without the pain of life, the sweetness would not be as delicious. It is hard to agree when you are in the midst of an unknown amount of distasteful. The theory to have loved and lost as a positive moment in your life has likely made you want to shun every optimist you've encountered, or worse. And knowing that your expectations could send you there even more violently is sometimes hard to deal with.

Dreams are often synonymous with expectations. The world is filled with slogans of how you should dare to dream, follow your heart, listen to the greater calling on your life. But what if that Dream ends up being a sports car in your head, and a tea cozy in reality? Where are your limitations, and when does reality and a mature perspective come into play?

Today a discussion developed in my kitchen over breakfast about how it is easier to hear God say no than it is to hear Him say yes. But often we wait, paralyzed by our fear of failed expectations, to hear that very quiet, often non-existent affirmative that our actions are lining up with the bigger picture.

Yet how terrifying is that first step? You haven't even lifted the second foot and you are earnestly listening for God to scream the cease and desist command. As if He didn't know that that first step was coming prior to your muscles engaging. At times that step is as far as you'll go, but there is a purpose in that one step. Even if it feels like wasted time and effort as a door slams in your face.

I have often lived in fear of having too lofty of expectations. And when it seemed like my dreams were some terrible prank, nothing but a light show, I have given up. However, I am beginning to see that sometimes those dreams are like the conjunctions in a sentence, bridging the gap from one thought that I have towards another that is on its way to realization. At times God will use my idea, my dream, to connect me to the bigger picture that I have been fearing that I'm missing. It is the waterway in which He directs my seemingly aimless ship.

Is it all just rubbish?

Painfully the walls are being torn down, new perimeters are being put into place. Previously I wrote of a time and a place that was years ago, but was strong enough to mark my life. The bricks and mortar from this time are crumbling and life has condemned them too dangerous to be inhabited any longer, but still at times I chain myself to them, hoping that the wrecking ball will not remove them all. I scramble from one pile of trash to the next, picking up a brick here or there, stuffing them into the bag I carry with me. And these moments in time are becoming too heavy to carry, the sharp angles digging into my back and tearing through the canvas of their container.

Now that I've salvaged some of these experiences, I try to recycle them into the new walls and foundations that uphold my life. The chipped corners and edges caked with old cement refuse to line up with the new supplies that are making up this project. Do I continue to try to meld the old and new?

This obvious metaphor has a not so obvious lesson that I believe we all have to learn over and over again. What do we dispose of as we go into the new phases of our lives? What do we keep? The people? The memories? The lessons? What is baggage and what is useful to the new life that is forever stretching out in front of us?

At times we are all children trapped in adults bodies that just can't seem to get big because it is just too hard. Growing up to me is like being in a small box, surrounded by a huge world, trying to claw your way out while being pulled through the trap door and being shoved back inside all at the same time.

Experience is the death of innocence but the birth of life. So often I'm being birthed and dying faster than I'm breathing. These days keep rolling and there is no sign of slowing, the clock is ticking and it is only going forward.

Bits and Pieces

You told me to write, and here I am, the sun is still black and everyone is asleep but I wake up needing to expose myself in straight even rows of black letters, so orderly, my thoughts contrasts with the cleanliness of this page. I wasn't sure what would happen. Its been over a month since I've attempted artistic suicide. I should have known it would be you that would come out. That is what scares me most of all. It is unnatural to love this way. What is this frightening destiny that we are supposed to live out that love will not die over hundreds of miles and years of pain? Oh, its too late. I think I've taken a step onto that pirate's plank, but I remember too much...

I remember you sitting in the corner of my apartment, so bitter against the past you still carried, raging against things you've done, embracing the pain that you felt you deserved. I remember your knuckles white as you gripped the steering wheel, the night getting later as you internally screamed. You just knew you couldn't trust me with that story, that glimpse of your horror. Surely no one would still love you...

I remember crying over those lost faces, pleading the world to care. No matter how loudly I screamed, nothing seemed to change but the overwhelming sense of failure.

I remember the dizzying reality of living life so full I thought I would break. We did break and here we are again; another step onto the plank.

There are forces that are stronger than two people. Destiny, whoever you believe decides it, is pulling and pushing, guiding and directing until a couple of souls can begin to feel inside out. I'm afraid to write this story down, you may recognize yourself in it, and I'm not sure if the thin threads keeping us together will withstand the pressure of that realization.

I wonder what is the plan of God. He gave us the choices and the mind to choose, but then that destiny slaps us around as we deal with the fallout of what we've decided.

You keep coming back to me, but the situation is impossible. Do you lay awake thinking of the past or do you daydream about the future? I can vividly describe the past, his face, your face, their faces, our tears, but the future is so foggy. Perhaps its because a decision is waiting on the sidelines, waiting to be sent into the game and change what this will all look like.

Why is the next chapter of my book glued shut? Will it stay like that until we come to that decision together, to move forward into the crazy plan He's molded for us? Where along the way did we get lost in the day to day and become okay with being plain? Perhaps if I tattooed my purpose on my skin like God chiseled the Law into stone I would stay true to it.

Sacrifice is the key, but who will send their pawn out to be slain first? Protect the King, but at what cost of our dignity? At what cost of our dreams? At what cost of fear and money and practicality? Passion, dedication, overwhelming commitment to one another, to the others around us, God and the people He has called us to: this is what we would sacrifice for.

I'm going to write quickly, faster than I would speak, before I lose my courage to lay it out for everyone to see. I've kept that screen in front of me for too long. I've acted like I don't need anyone or anything, especially not what we had before. Its more than being in each other's company, its who we're meant to be.