Roundabout

I wasn't aware that I had spent my whole life looking at the world through it's own reflection until the day came that I needed to make a change. I needed to break through the illusion of the life that I had been living.

As all stories begin, it was just another day, I had gone about my day to day business of groceries, cleaning, texting, social media and skimming the news. But a huge fight was on the horizon.

My partner of 10 years dared to ask about dinner. What did I want to eat? Innocent enough you might think, but on that day I crashed. "I don't care what we have!" Why was it always up to me to decide these things? Why do we always end up at the same place every day!? It's not like we don't eat three frickin meals a day every day! Does it really have to be such a big mystery, a huge challenge, every dang day?

Then I realized it. I am an idiot.

I wanted to believe that the fight had to do with some weird dynamic that we had whereby my partner was purposefully ignoring my magical ability to not stress upon such matters. Clearly she could see this was the more magical, free-spirited and confident approach, could she not!? But I realized, and accepted for the first time ever that we are not exceptional examples of some cosmic conundrum. That I am not some especially gifted individual whose psychic thoughts should be received by my partner, heeded and feared, that my partner needn't be amazed and enthralled by my lack of communication in favor of my just rolling with the universe as it provides the answers at a moments notice. I was actually, quite dysfunctional.

Prior to that moment I had blamed most of the dysfunction of our relationship on the hopelessness of our situation. The fact that we had not built a solid enough foundation to have the meaningful and magical relationship that every couple strives for. That it was not the condition of the relationship that was hopeless, it was me.

I had looked in the mirror very little, yet somehow was only able to view my world through the backwards impression I had held for, well, my whole life actually. As a young child, I had been exceptionally alone. I never saw my face in the mirror often, because I did not like seeing my own sadness. Yet I used that image, and the pain of that image, my entire life to define the person that I thought myself to be.

Amazing to me is the fact that that is the person that I have brought into each relationship and when the relationship felt strangely backwards, I always thought it was the relationship that was all wrong. It took the conversation about what to eat to awaken this realization and for me to let go of that child in the mirror and realize that I should have always trained my mind to look within.

I have planned my dinners every day since and, ironically, we go out alot to eat.