I love my boyfriend—like LOVE him—but sometimes I fantasize about how I would remove him from the planet. And I say that with love. Have you ever seen the movie This is 40 with that scene where the struggling married couple (Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann) are in bed talking about how they sometimes feel like they want to kill each other, and then share stories about how they’d do it? I know it sounds morbid but they were being playful and it was pretty freaking funny.
I remember when I first saw it and thought it was silly and hilarious in a hypothetical world, and then I moved in with Brian and he and I literally had almost that exact same conversation completely unplanned. It was strangely therapeutic for our sick/twisted senses of humor. The scary thing is, I think that we were only mostly joking.
Cohabitation might legitimately land one of us in prison. Shit has been super dicey around here lately so I've seriously been watching my back. And scouring the apartment for an ice pick. That’s how he said he’d off me—with an ice pick. Creative. Effective. If I wasn’t so impressed I might be a little offended. Of course I wouldn't actually kill him, but perhaps I’d give him an incredibly inconvenient injury that would take a super long time to heal. Him on the other hand, I’m not so sure. So for now, I sleep with one eye open.
Speaking of sleeping… (I think that's what it's called? I don't even remember anymore.)
I've always been an almost perfect sleeper. I literally fall asleep on my back mummy-style and wake up nine solid, dreamy hours later in the exact same position, covers intact and ready to take on the world.
Those. Days. Are. Over.
My last blog post was about staying. Ya know… Like even when shit gets rough, lovers stay. They work through it. I clearly forgot the disclaimer that states this concept is voided altogether if sleep apnea is involved. I now feel it should be mandatory to disclose this prior to entering into a relationship. Like I have a kid. Or I don't like popcorn. Well Brian did not tell me this, and now that we live together it is a whole new level of madness.
They say the first year of marriage is the hardest. Does the same stand for living together? What are the stats on that? We are roughly 2.3 months in, and Brian probably sleeps with an ice pick under his pillow (that I sometimes hope he accidentally stabs himself with in his sleep—too far?). Apparently, when I wake him up multiple times in the night to ask him to turn over and shut the f*ck up it disturbs his sleep.
RRRROOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAARRRR!!!!!!!
As our sleeping situation is just one example of many in Brian/Jamie Loveland (I had to keep this to a readable length!), I often wonder if the grass is greener on the other side. Like OK, I hardly ever sleep anymore and I now walk around life like a baggy-eyed, hyper-emotional she-zombie, but what if that's not so bad compared to the couple next door? Wouldn’t it be so much easier if every couple had a public grass rating? Like Chris and Katie's grass is 72% green. And John and Sarah's is 42% with lots of little brown patches. Then we could really know how green our grass is, comparatively speaking, and solve the age-old issue of lawn envy. Amiright?!
Moving in together has been one of the strangest experiences for me. It's like the most fun thing in the world, and also the freaking hardest. I can't imagine my life without him, yet sometimes it feels impossible to be with him. We laugh. We cry. We fight. We make love. We talk marriage. We talk murder.
What I am learning on this crazy journey of love and living together is that we have to do a whole lot more than just stay. Of course commitment and acceptance are huge, but if we don't take action to make our own grass greener, we are forever going to be looking over the fence. So, Step 1: Pick your grass/partner/fill in the blank, and Step 2: Water the shit out of it, even when—especially when—it starts to look a little sad, a little brown, a little blurry from sleep deprivation. When you start to wonder what the neighbor’s looks like.
Whatever your "water" is, whatever you know in your heart will help your grass grow…ya just gotta. Compassion. Forgiveness. Humility. Space. Communication. A vacation. For me, it’s patience…and a whole lotta grace (laced with caffeine). Whatever makes you want to cringe during conflict, do that. Keep your energy IN not out, and in LOVE not lack. It never doesn't feel awesome in the end (double-negative...check!), and your grass will be green again in no time.
And if that doesn’t work, well, there’s always a wood chipper.
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