I Choose Us

I watched my first Christmas movie of the season, it's the thing I do every year to remind myself there is more good in the world than bad. This year my first favorite was "The Family Man". I have loved this movie from the first time I saw it. Enamored, I would wait for it on TV and sit with my hot cocoa, and my boyfriend/husband and watch it remembering how lucky I am to have the love of my life and how easy it would have been for none of it to have happened.
That's the thing about life, one turn in another direction and things just fade away or disappear. It almost happened to us, we, my manfriend and I, almost disappeared. We had turned away from each other, more than once, to seek other things, to go in different directions. I watched my movie thinking back to the days when we had left each other, tearfully leaving the other behind not knowing how it would all work out. We almost missed everything. I say everything, because that is how it is when you meet your match, when you lose them, it feels as though you lose everything.
Back in 2007, I think, we were in Santa Fe, it was in February, we were freezing as we drove through little tiny New Mexico towns, laughing, holding onto each other, together remembering how much we love snow and cold and clear star filled skies. We had driven to a historic town to see if it was a place we could retire one day. We had to stop at a super store for something banal, when in a heap of old movies that had been thrown in a bin, I saw "The Family Man". Grinning at me, Michael looked into my eyes the way only someone who knows you to your bones can and said, "Get it."
Giggling, I picked up the half priced movie out of the bin and put it into the basket.
He knows the movie reminds me of how we almost didn't get it right, how we almost let something as remarkable as the love we have for each other slip away.
Yesterday, Michael and I fought. It happens so rarely, it's galling. There has been a disconnect, a void sitting between us that we haven't been sure of how to cross. Most of it can be easily explained away with mergers, moves, jobs, security, money, kids, time and being older, more tired than we have ever been before. As the humans we are, it's easy to see how all of the stress and pressure we are under divides us and nearly conquers us. There is no mystery to why we are having such hard time staying as close as we have been in the past. There is so much stuff going on it has started to push us away from each other.
We haven't always been as smart as we are now. There have been times, prior to our marriage when the stuff won and we let it push us in different directions. Our humanity allowed the bad stuff in and we forgot who we were together, as a couple, as friends. Separate, we do alright, but together, we are better people, kinder, more generous, more tolerant, even funnier. We have survived apart, but together, we thrive, grow, learn so much more than when we are alone. Our hearts are open when we are together. Apart, we are good, but together we are great.
This movie that I watch every year, reminds me how lucky I am that it didn't take someone moving to Europe to figure things out. I see through this film, just exactly what I have and how lucky I am to have it.
Yes, yesterday we fought, I cried, Michael looked stricken but at the end of the day, we choose us. We had to say what we felt. We had to break open and talk about the big scary decisions we were facing. We had to talk about how the stuff began to push into the void between us. We had to break open rather than break up, because we know better now. We know we are better together than we are apart, and that is what is so upsetting about what is happening to us and around us. The giant looming problem facing us is time versus money. I looked at my husband, the man I have known for nearly thirty years and I had to be brave enough to tell him I was scared. I had to be open enough to tell him I don't want more money if he isn't here to share it with me. I had to spill my guts on the floor and hope that he loved me enough not to stomp all over them. When he began to talk I saw all the things I had been feeling come back out of him. All the fear, the anger, the uncertainty, the anxiety of getting it wrong. With every ounce of us splayed out on the floor, every thought and feeling expressed, I looked at my beloved and knew that once again we chose us.
I would love to say the pressure is diffused and decisions have been made that allow us some feeling of control. Well, that is one happy ending we did not get. What we got, what we chose for ourselves was that regardless of what happens we have faith in us, faith in our God, and the knowing that together we will work this out somehow.
Once when the kids were little one them said we were together because we were married an we had to be. I remember seeing Michael look at me and smile. I said, "Nope, we are together because that is what we want. We choose to be together."
And so it is now, after all these years, we still choose to show up for each other. We still choose us.