Walking the Seasons

I was mad. Genuinely miffed! There I was, seated and fuming and but a few minutes before I was happily tapping away on my laptop; sure I was commenting on an interesting blog post or looking at porn. I was pretty darn contented! As unlikely as it seemed, I went from happy to “argh” in six seconds flat.

So that begs the question: How did I go from “the world is great, babies are cute and let's hold hands” to “I want to find a group of puppies and throw them into the sun?”

Before we get to that, let's dive into some background here. On a random weekend my girl friend and I were on a hike, a particularly rigorous one given the heat and a couple sharp inclines. Toward the end of our hike, the topic of moving in together had popped up, surprisingly. What is even more surprising is that I was the one who brought it up. In truth it had been on my mind for a few weeks now. If you read this blog regularly, you would know that I like to “press the action.” That is, if there's something I need to talk about, I'll definitely talk about it; I don't like to let things linger.

So there it was, I threw the question out there like a live grenade, waiting to see what the fall out would be. My gal answered fairly positively and the conversation turned that direction pretty easily as we began discussing logistics and hurdles. In all, it was a great conversation, one I was looking forward to talking more about later on.

Fast forward about twenty four hours… I was mad and genuinely miffed! I was pissed because I felt cornered. What did I think about marriage? “I think it's gross,” I replied, in a poor, poor attempt to dodge the question. I knew where this question was coming from. I mean, don't we all know where this question comes from? People, this question gets asked because, well, the person asking it wants to know if you're stable; that you're reliable and trust worthy. Ultimately, they want to know if you're worth the investment of time and emotion that will yield a marriage or not.

The answer is that I do not know, I didn't have the answer to the question posed by my lady-confidant. I let her know that. I wasn't being presented an ultimatum, merely I was presented with something to think about.

When I understood where the question was coming from I was able to ease up and not feel “cornered.” In my attempt to be forward thinking I'd inspired some forward thinking in my gal's head as well. Or, rather, simply forced the issue on a discussion that was long overdue, something that needed to be talked about that neither of us knew how to approach. When thinking about it like this, my frustration subsided, I wasn't being cornered.

Sure, I don't have an answer or a timeline available, at least not right now. What I do have though is patience and curiosity and a willingness to stick around and see what happens next. I'm willing to “Walk the Seasons” with my gal, get to know her better, through good and bad, love and loss and not be afraid of it and, ultimately, see where this all goes.