First, I missed league bowling, and my team only won one game. That mostly only happens when I'm not there. I knew not contributing those extra 20-30 pins would make a difference. Also, my girls in Chicago were talking about having a girls' night Saturday night. What were my plans for Saturday night? Kicking it with Easy and Lion in East St. Louis. East St. Louis. Seriously. But I guess it's okay cause I'm spending time with two of my favorite people in the whole wide world.
And then there's the feeling of all this time I've been spending in St. Louis and what it's doing to Easy and me. When we're apart, we miss each other terribly, so it just makes sense to spend as much time together as we can. But there's also the fear of what's going to happen when our honeymoon phase ends. We've decided we're just going to stay in the honeymoon phase forever. We know it's unrealistic, but we're gonna try it anyway.
Easy and I definitely don't see the world through the same lens, but it's really not an issue because we're so good at communicating and making sure we develop a common language to bridge those differences. But when we're discussing something for the thirtieth time, there's bound to be some frustration adding into the equation. That's when I get scared because it feels like maybe the end of the honeymoon phase. But then things gets resolved and everything feels deliriously happy again. And it's not like we didn't have disagreements almost from the moment we got together. I think what makes us feel honeymoon-stage-ish still is the strong desire to resolve conflicts so we can get back to the lovey dovey happiness.
But with all this time spent in St. Louis, there's not much time for just me. At least it's starting to feel that way. I had kind of forgotten that I like to have a lot of alone time. I didn't think much of it when I was younger because my parents kept me sheltered and going out wasn't really an option, so I just hung out by myself at home. But then in college, I was hardly ever alone at any point within a given 24 hour period, but that didn't seem odd because the people I was around were so much like me, I didn't feel like I was surrounded by people, I was surrounded by versions of myself.
So now, in the new world that includes Easy, there isn't much room for me being me, in my own space. We're working on it though. For instance, early Saturday evening, Easy had a gig. This is a gig I've never gone with him to even though I've been in town for it. But this time, I didn't even ride there with him. I didn't drop him off at the church and then head to the mall. I just stayed at his place and spent some time by myself. And it made me happy. And it made me miss him. I was looking forward to him coming back and telling me about his gig and how it went.
Hopefully, a few small changes here and there can solve the problem. For most people, who they are and what they prefer fundamentally is up for negotiation in the context of a relationship, and there are growing pains. I'm prepared to handle it (I think), and I'm looking forward to a time when solving this problem of me having "me time" is a thing of the past. And I suppose I'll wait til the not-having-time-for-my-friends-in-Chicago thing becomes more of a problem before we tackle that.
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