Personal crises do funny things to relationships, as too many of us know too well. We go through these things, individually or together – or together-but-individually – and almost always, I think, something changes.
Our journeys become harder when we’re faced with something other than the chosen road. Doubly so, perhaps, when we’re fighting against the current, thereby using energy we previously put into our partners, our relationships, our life-as-we-knew-it.
This extra baggage we carry isn’t always something we acknowledge. We don’t pick up rage or grief or illness and turn to our companion and say, I’m sorry. I have to carry this for a while. For now I’m going to have to put down your need for time to yourself / some of the things I do around the house / my ability to be a nice person to live with.
We just don’t.
Or at least I didn’t.
My baggage was an extra weight, strapped to me like a backpack, that I couldn’t identify. I questioned it constantly, turning around and around in desperate attempts to identify it. But it was a part of me, and so it turned with me, always just out of sight.
I picked up that backpack when no one was looking. When I wasn’t looking. It was just there, and it became part of me. My husband could see it, but he didn’t realize it was unidentifiable to me, and unwanted.
To him, it had become part of me.
He didn’t want it in our lives either. He didn’t like that backpack, and he hadn’t agreed to let me bring it on our journey. He thought the backpack and I were inseparable and, not satisfied with that, he gave me a choice: ditch the baggage or get off at the next station.
I chose to ditch the baggage, of course. I hadn’t wanted it in the first place.
As it turned out, it wasn’t so easy to set down.
In the end my husband had to help me. It was too heavy a weight for me to deal with on my own. So as I sat down in the middle of the path, like a stubborn child unwilling or unable to go on, he started loosening the straps so I could walk on. Slowly, bit by bit, he moved things around to adjust the load. He held my hand for a while. He kept me going.
It wasn’t enough.
When I said I needed to stop – just stop – he didn’t blink. He called in others on our path to help support the weight of my baggage and slowly, gently, he helped me take the pack off.
That baggage is gone now, though my body still bears the evidence of its weight – the marks it has left on me, the ache of having borne it for so long. My husband sees these scars, as only the one I’ve chosen to travel with me on the path of life truly can.
I’m less afraid of that extra baggage now. I know what it looks like, what it feels like to carry. I know more about where it came from and what it almost cost me.
I said almost.
Today is our 7th wedding anniversary. We’ve been together 13 years.
I’m feeling lucky.
I love you, my love.
