30 For 30 — Day 23: A Shared Life

30 Days.
30 Photos.
30 Lessons.

Lesson 23: A Shared Life

Most people who have ever loved someone already know this, but I am a late bloomer.

In the film “Into The Wild” (I haven’t read the book) as Christopher McCandless’ journey comes to an end in Alaska (to put it gently) he writes in his notepad, “Happiness is only real…once shared.”

I’m lucky in that what I am lacking in happily married parents I have made up for in happily partnered friends. I’m surrounded by examples of relationships that are far from perfect, but are whole and true. They didn’t come without work or practice, but I have watched from the sidelines and I think I can say with confidence that a life is better when shared.

I want that to be true.
As someone who has had that and let it go in fear, I think I notice it more. While I love my independent time, my solo adventures, my freedom to do whatever I want in my own space and on my own schedule…I do miss sharing it. I miss the conversations that were light and silences that held weight. I miss the little things that became big. It was beautiful and fun. I’ve leaned on my friends heavily to make up for that and luckily they have answered the call and allowed me to share with them experiences, joys, triumphs, grief. I can’t thank them enough.

I don’t doubt that there are people out there who truly thrive when alone. Sometimes when I am in a zone I think, “I could go on like this forever and be fine alone.”
Sometimes… in a different zone I think, “I wish I didn’t have to do this by myself…but I chose to.”

Love is a weird, beautiful, lucky, hard, amazing thing.
Finding someone that can fit into that narrow gap between unconditional love and support — and freedom to be your best self is difficult. I don’t pretend to know how it all works. I have the scars to prove in fact that I don’t.
Maybe it isn’t a gap… that’s a bad analogy…it’s a weird venn diagram with circles that are forever moving and overlapping. It’s up to you both to communicate and trust in the other to ensure the overlapping parts remain intact and in sync.

My friends and their partners do a great job and have been excellent role models from what I can tell. I adore them and how they can lift each other up and put each other down as a fun partnership should, I think.

Whether it be with a partner or a friend I know for myself the highest of highs when with someone else surpass the highest of highs when alone.

Your successes are amplified, your failures are muted, your joys are extended, your sorrows diluted.

I’ve always felt like a late bloomer. I didn’t mind growing a bit later and coming into my own a bit later… but I will regret for a long time learning more about myself later and experiencing love with someone else later. Those two go hand in hand. I could have saved myself and my partners so much unneeded pain.
I think if you don’t know and love yourself it’s very hard to succeed in a relationship. That may be a bullshit excuse though…a cop out. Truly committed people can work through it together as they learn about themselves as individuals…they just have to trust the other person. They can’t let fear and “what if” dictate them (read: me).

I saw a quote that I will continue to really like until I inevitably see it painted on a piece of driftwood at a Pottery Barn for $60 that says,

“Don’t save up love like you’re trying to retire on it…Give it away like you’re made of it.”

I wish I had more practice in that as a younger man. I wish I had taken the leaps in high school and college to prepare me for a successful landing later in life.
I had a partner that taught me everything through trial and error and it was unfair for them to suffer through the highs and lows of us as I learned. If only I had learned it sooner and when we met I knew what I know now. How would things be different? How amazing could that have been?

These are the questions that will eat at but I’ll try to fight off because it doesn’t do good to dwell on them. If Rafiki were here he would swing his stick at my head. I pulled the anchor up and that ship has sailed. A ship that deserved a captain at their best, but instead got a green one that was too afraid to leave the safety of harbor time and time again and really let loose in the open ocean.

That is the nature of love though and that is what makes it beautiful. It is scary. It’s drifting on the horizon with no land in sight and trusting you are going to reach your destination. In the mean time though you enjoy the waves, the sun, the air. It’s a different beauty. You give someone the information and power needed to destroy you…and hope to dear God they choose not to use it. You have to give them that though in order for it to be true. I can say that I have loved and been loved. I am proud that none of it was faked. It was beautiful and I will never call that time wasted or a mistake. There is beauty in that too.

Do I have regrets? Of course. I had what people dream of and I gave it away. I wish the timing, the circumstance, the knowledge I had were different. I would bet that the outcome may have been completely different.
But…we are here…we are now.

I don’t know shit about much else, but I know that a life is better when shared.

As I approach 30 it’s nice that we live in a time where people are prioritizing themselves in a way that seems to prepare them for a great life partnered with someone else. It isn’t necessary — lots of people do that work as a partnered unit — but I at least don’t feel like as big of an idiot as I watch others figure it out for themselves too haha.

I would rather see people wait to get married or not get married than to be pressured into something that ends with them not at their happiest. That’s deserved.

What a fucking tight rope to balance on though…sheesh…committing to the work and taking the leap…but not committing or leaping into something for the sake of not being alone. I don’t think there is a right way to do it. I hurt the wrong people that didn’t deserve it…but as I type more and more I realize there is no damn recipe for this shit and even when a recipe is put in front of you sometimes the end product still doesn’t taste right. It makes no damn sense. It’s scary. It’s hard. It’s a miracle… but it’s worth it.

I don’t know if I’m writing this to apologize to those I’ve hurt because I have learned what I set out to…or if I’m trying to remind myself it’ll be okay no matter what. There’s a theme here: even when I think I have it figured out…I soon realize I am still figuring it out.

Everybody seems to be…I just noticed a lot later. Classic late bloomer.

Giddyup,
Pat