The Fluff That Distracts…

We weren’t always this happy, my husband and I.  Our first few years were sort of rough.  I know a lot of that was due in part to adjusting to living together, having no money, and learning how to prioritize our happiness.  But a lot of it, too, was because we weren’t exactly in sync.  We always loved each other.  But I’m not sure that we were exactly aware of the other all of the time: what we each did every day; what we wanted; what makes us happy.

In the few short years that we’ve been married, we’ve gone through a lot.  Pair that with our unusually difficult dating history, and you might just have a recipe for a stable marriage.  I’m not saying that in order to be happy or stable you have to go through crap.  But what I am saying is that going through crap kind of speeds up that process.

In the winter of 2012, J was offered the job here at Campbell.  We were living happily in Charlotte in a house we had just barely moved into and made home.  No sooner than he got the call he was out the door, and I was left behind.  This isn’t a story you haven’t heard before.  But it’s an important part of our story.  In that time we spent apart, I was forced to reassess my myself, my priorities and my marriage.  When everything feels like it’s falling apart, suddenly what you need is very clear.  Everything else was stripped away.  All that fluff we all let ourselves get so distracted by was no longer important.  At all.

Moving here meant big changes.  I joke that there isn’t a Target (I mean, there really isn’t–but I joke about how important that is).  Finding a job for me would be nearly impossible.  We wouldn’t have immediate access to every store we’d ever need.  Our house wouldn’t be the same caliber house we’d leave behind in Charlotte.  All of those things mattered so much to me for about the first week J was gone.  And then none of it mattered at all anymore.  In actuality–he wasn’t gone three days before I called him hysterically crying that we just needed to do whatever we could do to be in the same place.  I’d give up Target.  I kid–but you get my point.

I’ve always wanted to stay home and write, but our lifestyle never allowed for that.  Bills have to get paid.  Seeing how the move was rattling me, J suggested I stay home.  Our house would be cheaper.  We would eat meals in because I’d be home to make them (and well…you can only eat so many wings from The County Seat).  We’d cut out gas costs with his job a mile away and mine across the hall.  Target wouldn’t eat $200 of every paycheck.  This move meant really big changes.

I appreciate that he works hard and that allows me to stay home and chase my dreams.  He appreciates that his underwear is always clean and his meals are always prepared (and he never has to clean up the mess).  I am a much less grumpy person.  He gets to have the job he loves and focus everything he has on that.  And I get to do what I love.  And we’ve both made sacrifices to make this happen.

It’s this cycle of appreciation.  This move, the one I was so allergic to, transformed my marriage.  It’s a lot easier not to care about the little things that might just piss you off when you see the big picture.  At the end of every day, my heart is grateful for the work my husband does.  And his is grateful for the work I do.

We figured out our rhythm and our priorities.  We learned what we can live without.  And then when I got so sick last year, I didn’t have the added worry about how much work I was missing on the days I couldn’t drag myself out of bed.  There were so many things with this move that neither of us could really understand–but it ended up exactly how it should.

And we learned how to just be happy.