Cruise

Heard this song playing today at the gym and I gotta admit, it didn't annoy me as much as it has in the past. Maybe it's all that Nashville I've been watching?

Baby you a song
You make me wanna roll my windows down and cruise

Hearing it reminded me of last summer (2013), when one of my kids' beloved former babysitters got married, and we went to the wedding (all four of us, since the New Englander was still a Wisconsin resident at the time). I remember seeing the happy couple heading up to the dance floor with this song playing:

Baby you a song
You make me wanna roll my windows down and cruise
Down a back road blowin’ stop signs through the middle
Every little farm town with you
In this brand new Chevy with a lift kit
Would look a hell of a lot better with you up in it
So baby you a song
You make me wanna roll my windows down and cruise

I wasn't familiar with the song at the time, and it struck me as sort of funny because I didn't know they were country fans. But it wasn't hard to see that the way the bride and groom feel about each other is pretty darn aptly described by the lyrics.

Over the last few weeks, through the healing work I've been doing, I've gotten increasingly clear about how much I love the New Englander and just how well-suited I believe we are for one another. One could argue that the multiple, back and forth cross country moves that have already transpired and that would need to transpire to make it happen suggest otherwise, but I disagree.

You see, when we came together the first time, we were both seriously wounded by both our childhoods and previous relationships. We worked through a lot of it, but we couldn't work through all of it while he was living here. In retrospect, we were both just too afraid to really show up to each other the way we'd need to show up to make it work. We both had/have healing work of our own to do, and we had to do some of it separately.

A friend said to me when I got home from Portland and was feeling so strongly that it was wrong for us to part that in her own experience with her current love, it was the broken parts that still wanted to be with him. That didn't feel true for me at the time, and the more healing work I do, the more I know it is the best parts of me that believe that what I feel in my heart and my body with him and for him cannot be wrong. Have we had our issues in the past? Yes. Do I understand why people in both of our lives might wish we'd both just move on separately and be with easier or lighter or more similarly located people? I do. But I didn't fight this hard to be able to hear my heart and listen to my body's messages so that I could do what other people believe is the right thing to do. So I'm listening to my own wisdom.

And every time the two of us (and the four of us) come back together, there is a feeling that is just as strong if not stronger than ever that we belong next to one another. Before I started my trauma recovery group, I was still afraid of how things might work out if he did come back. But now I'm not. Now I feel confident that we can and we would give each other the space and the support to continue to do our healing work, all while enjoying the many, many benefits inherent in the way we fit together.

However, I'm not the one who would need to once again uproot myself and take a major topographical hit in the name of love. And I get that it wouldn't be easy, but I think it'd be soooo much easier than the last time around now that we're both so much more aware of our fear. And I think removing the question mark that's been hanging over us about whether we are going to choose to be one another's person and spend as much as possible of the rest of our lives together would make being together feel that much more solid. But I can't remove that question mark for him. I can only be where I am right now, which is open to sharing my life with someone who truly sees me and gets me and can help me continue to become my best self to a greater degree.

Pondering all this, and hearing the refrain to this song play continually inside my head (much to my son's chagrin when I sing it aloud), I was reminded of this scene in When Harry Met Sally when Harry tracks Sally down on New Year's Eve and says:

"I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible."

I hear you on that one Harry. That's how I'm feeling right now too...