I’ve been in something of a wishful state lately. I wish I could turn back the clock of time, perhaps all the way back to 2004 when I left for Florida. I want that time back so I could spend a little more time with Kat, if only a few extra days.
Of course, Kat likes to remind me that such things are nonsense, because timing is everything in a relationship. Oh sure, you have to meet at some point, and one of you has to have the guts to ask the other one out on a date. You have to find some commonality and mutual attraction, too. But you also have to find the right time and space so it can all begin in the first place.
As some of you know, Kat and I technically met in 2005. I was in Florida, she was in Washington, and she was casting about for a performing troupe to hang her tricorn on, and at the time the Pyrates of the Coast were getting an awful lot of gigs.
I received her email application one day. I was terribly intrigued, if for no other reason than she seemed like a lively lass with a good sense of humor and some really good piratitude.
But the timing wasn’t right. We would have been a disaster back then, largely because it wasn’t our time yet.
I think that’s a problem in some relationships. We are so attracted to someone and want to be with them so much that we don’t factor in the timing issue. For me, I was coming out of a 10-year marriage back then. I wasn’t ready to be with anyone, in Washington or in Florida. I was a train wreck.
It was bad timing all around. I wasn’t through learning all my lessons yet. I was still getting some schooling, things I needed to learn about myself so that I would be ready someday to meet Kat.
It is so painfully obvious to me now. Check that. It’s not painful. It’s quite humorous actually. Without knowing it I was finishing my undergraduate degree in relationships and moving up to my masters. I was schooled by some amazing people who seemed to know just what I needed to move on to the next lesson and level, even though some turned out to be hellacious taskmasters.
I thought of this a few days ago. I was channel surfing and came across a televangelist. I normally don’t listen to what they have to say, but one thing did stick: God gives us the people we need in our lives to move us forward.
I began to think about my journey over the years and could map out all the lessons I’ve learned. Things like nothing is really so important that it is make or break in a relationship, that you can choose to love anyone, that it’s far more important to give than receive, and that love really isn’t loaded up with conditions, that when the right one comes along, you accept them for who they are, not who you want them to be.
After returning to Washington State, I really thought that I was ready to graduate. But there were a few more lessons to learn. I learned that you have to put your relationship first and the other person has to be the most important thing in your life. Not every single minute, of course, but the lion’s share of the time.
I’m not saying this is everyone’s journey. I’m not so egotistical as to think that my own life is the pattern for everyone else to follow. This is just about my life and the road I had to take to finally get to where I was going, not just the right place, but the right place in time.
This was certainly true with Kat and I. I think we really began to notice there was an attraction a little more than a year ago but I had a few more lessons to learn. Thankfully, it was a short course, and I must have aced the class for all the lessons I learned then are still fresh in my mind now, and they all apply to my relationship with Kat, albeit in some strange and wonderful ways.
We laugh at some of them. The new habits I picked up from a very conditional relationship. And my almost categorical disdain for nearly everything I said I liked so much between last August and December, from contra dancing to seaweed and Pho.
And yet, they were the final lessons I needed to learn. I needed to finally learn not to be a chameleon or a Gumby. I needed to learn that I could be completely honest with someone I was involved with and actually speak the whole truth, unvarnished, never saying a single thing because I thought that’s what they wanted to hear.
That, after all, is how I walked into that last class. I was a walking and talking love zombie, brainless, spineless and just going through the motions. I’d like to say I don’t know why, but I do. I had to take that final exam, the one that would finally allow me to love someone fully, honestly, without reservation and holding nothing back.
Was all this education worth it? Couldn’t I have just skipped a few tests and challenged the course? I guess a lot of us do. We want to take the easy route to happiness, whether its our relationship, our careers, what have you.
But for me, I am glad I waited for the graduation ceremony. I didn’t screw things up for a change. Though we both would love to have more time with one another – each telling the other that even 30 years isn’t enough time – we had to wait for the right time – for now – for it to work. Any other time or place and we would have probably parted strangers or enemies instead of two people who appear to be meant for one another.
We’re still catching up on all that. I guess there was a little extra credit homework left to do. And my, it’s an awful lot of fun!
In the Emerald City, glad I didn’t cut class,
– Robb