The Weight of Still Waters
For the majority of the eleven years that we were together, Billy and I heard the sound of two sets of oars in the water, the gentle but steadfast rush of parting water as it cascaded across the boat, with the strength of movement put in by two people in perfect tandem.
Our relationship was a journey, much like rowing a boat, with both of us contributing equally to keep it moving forward.
At some point, the rowboat that we were on, our relationship, suddenly became heavier and stagnant, as if the weight was too much to bear.
What had changed?
I didn’t see a break against the still waters of the lake.
It’s human and part of our ancestral heritage to look up at the sky.
When I was a child, I remember watching the clouds make pictures of all kinds of things that were extracted from my imagination.
I would sometimes see a blooming flower and even a frog destined to turn into my prince.
That day, even the clouds were still — try as I might to see movement, they didn’t seem to budge to create any reverie to distract me from my reality.
I licked my finger and put it into the air to make absolutely certain that the absence of the wind was indeed what was causing the boat we were in to suddenly lose its momentum.
Nothing.
I remember my finger remained wet- The stale air was thick with its oppressiveness.
The reeds that long ago used to whisper their secrets while we swept by didn’t make a sound either.
Some say that in the absence of one of our senses, others may get stronger.
Is that what happened…?
Because the sound of nothing had deafened me, my sense of touch intensified?
Suddenly, these oars felt like they weighed more than the battle ropes that had tied my heart closed.
I will not cry.
I will not cry.
I pulled myself together.
“Are you stretching before workouts?” Hannah had asked sternly.
I responded, “No- I don’t have time for that…”
Gently, Hannah kneaded my neck, trying to release the tension she found there, working it down into my shoulders.
“There are knots in your shoulders. Stretching is important before working out to prepare your muscles, joints, and tendons.”
I enjoyed the silence better than listening to her lecture me.
She sounds just like the voices in my head when I work out without stretching.
I already knew everything she was saying.
I wanted to tell her to rub an essential oil on me that would somehow magically create more hours in the day or to give me the secret recipe that contains all-natural superfoods that can help me get less sleep and avoid dementia or Alzheimer’s.
I couldn’t help but question sarcastically in my mind:
Wasn’t my favorite lemongrass oil, which I always asked her to rub on my skin, the answer to more time?
Instead, I just told her: “Hannah, I sacrificed a different priority just to be here. I am doing my best to take care of all the things that I should.”
Angry with myself for losing my patience with her, I suddenly felt my emotions swing in the other direction… towards a deep sense of loss and longing.
I was on the brink of crying again, like I did the last time I was here.
I saw an Instagram reel about grief being held within our shoulders.
Is that why, when she began to dig her fingers into my shoulder blades, I began to feel sadness?
That could have nothing to do with it; perhaps that reel had just given me an excuse to feel that way.
I felt more sadness that I was paying someone to touch me.
Billy used to massage me when I was hurting.
Before Billy died, I would never have dreamed that I would pay someone to massage me.
My arms were tired before I found Billy.
The other relationships before him had felt unbalanced.
Billy taught me what it felt like to work toward something together.
Throughout our time together, I rarely felt alone.
Unfortunately, I learned to become even more set in my ways about certain things because he always led me to believe that my little idiosyncrasies were, in fact, endearing.
At least to him, they were.
I would come home crying and sometimes even yelling from my work, and that was okay.
He loved the bad parts of me.
He loved Daniel.
The only thing that I realized he didn’t love was my silliness…
At least not my silly singing or dancing in public.
My arms with him weren’t tired from rowing the boat alone.
BUT…
My arms, I found, still ached.
My arms were weary from past wounds and an accumulation of sadness that had never been released.
With him, none of that was ever confronted or healed by me.
Wrong or right, he held me literally almost every night.
I never had to face anything within me because I had him.
When you died, I felt a profound sense of betrayal, not just by you, but by life itself.
More than that, I was angry for betraying myself.
I had known.
I knew you weren’t okay.
But I didn’t want to see it.
When you said that I was wrong about you, I chose the easy path.
I chose to believe you, despite my intuition telling me otherwise.
For the last three years, since you have been gone, I have stayed angry and not sad.
I was consumed by anger that you died, that you left me to navigate this life alone.
Angry that I wasn’t enough.
Angry that Daniel was not enough.
Angry that in your book, you weren’t enough for yourself.
But more than all of that, there was a deep-seated self-loathing for allowing myself to stay in a place for so long where I felt loved, safe, and secure, yet never truly challenged.
I stayed so long settling for what was comfortable, where I was never confronted with my inadequacies because, in your eyes, I had none.
Every relationship that we experience teaches us more about ourselves.
We learn what is truly important to us when we share our lives with another and discover that there are specific values that we can compromise on and others that we cannot.
I recall being 16 years old in my foster home and having my first romantic experience.
I remember being in counseling and telling my therapist all about him.
I remember telling her that I felt like I was doing all the work in our relationship.
She told me that two people in a relationship are like two people out on a rowboat on a very tranquil lake.
They are both rowing that boat together, and that is what makes that relationship endure.
A relationship only lasts because both partners are equally sharing in carrying the relationship through the water and into the distance.
She told me that to know for sure whether or not you are alone in a relationship, you need to stop rowing the boat altogether.
She told me that if the boat continues to move, you know you are not alone.
If it doesn’t move, she told me you need to get off the boat.
I have always understood this, and I have always done what she suggested whenever I felt that my relationships were not being invested in equally.
What I had never experienced until my relationship with Billy was being the first one to stop rowing the boat.
In the end, it was I who began to question the life we had built together.
I sensed a restlessness setting in, a feeling that neither of us was growing anymore.
Our relationship had become complacent, as though it had reached its limit, unable to inspire the potential for change and evolution that we once had shared.
I realized that although we seemed to have many of the same values, we both had different demons.
In the last year, I became aware that I couldn’t help him with his own battles, and as caught up as he was in his own struggles, he was unable to help me fight mine.
We never fought, and we never argued.
On the surface, everything indicated that we had the perfect relationship.
But I had come to the realization that I didn’t need a boat on a tranquil lake.
What I needed was a hurricane and to be lost at sea.
I have learned since then that there is a reason I am drawn to hurricanes.
You know what to expect from hurricanes.
You will not be left unscathed; you will be left with devastation.
But here’s the thing about hurricanes:
You know you will be challenged.
You know you will face hardships and obstacles.
Even after they pass, if you live within the vicinity of their seasonal recurrence, you will be aware that you should never get too comfortable because they are bound to cross your path again.
Some prefer the unchanged, the tried, and the true.
The truth is, I do too.
BUT…
This is not what anyone in our world needs.
The hurricanes will bring growth, and my restless soul tells me that inherently, I long for that.
The truth is, whether you find yourself numb from the depths of addiction to drugs, caught in the relentless cycle of dopamine-driven technology, or, like me, are just beginning to awaken your soul, the impact of growth that hurricanes bring is universal.
Every person on our planet stands to benefit from the transformative power these storms unleash, reminding us that even in the chaos, there is potential for renewal and profound change.