Couples Have a Vocabulary All Their Own
We have words we say to mean things no one else would understand. We may pronounce a word like a guy we worked with decades ago. We may mispronounce a name in the way a neighbor we had for a brief time did.
We have words and phrases we've nabbed from movies. Words we've evolved to mean something different from their actual textbook definitions. Some we change to say what we want them to mean. Wafting, snugs, glomming onto, ...
But it's not just using the same made-up words that seem strange to others after a while...
You Think You Have Original Thoughts And Ideas...But You Don't
Some years ago, we went to Tyler State Park, and Caddo Lake, in East Texas.
Soon after that get-away, we visited Michael's brother in Albuquerque. While Michael was waiting for our luggage to come out, Andy and I went to get the car.
Andy asked what had been going on, and I told him a little about our weekend trip to East Texas. Canoeing around the lake. How it felt prehistoric. The strange beauty of the bald cypress roots coming up everywhere and the Spanish moss hanging down, the eerie encounters with alligators...
We picked Michael up, and Andy asked him what was new. Michael also thought to mention the trip. Not only was that the thing he decided to share...
He shared the exact same highlights, in the exact same way...down to the smallest observation.
We'd done quite a lot that weekend: camping, cooking out, touring around Tyler, going out to dinner, exploring a little General Store, seeing a show, hiking, experienced a dramatic storm, and more.
But neither of us mentioned any of those things.
Embracing Codependence?
We pride ourselves, apparently very wrongly, on not being codependent. I mean, I travel a lot. Michael travels. We have our own lives and our own interests.
We miss each other when we're apart, but we can undoubtedly function on our own. We are our own individual selves.
Ha! Those conversations with Andy showed otherwise: It's like we'd developed a script, and both read from the exact same one. I did not share my own unique take on a particular event. after all.
Turns out, I shared the "Michael and Susan Press Release" version of the weekend. A document neither of us even realized we'd created.
Spooky!
And Yet...Also Very Comforting
But all those shared memories and references and repeated conversations are part of what's so great about a long-term relationship. It's all the stories that we tell just the same way...and all the ones we couldn't even begin to tell anyone else because the back-stories involved are just too complicated.
Anyway, I just know that I am very grateful that Michael provides more than his share of my personal Daily Hits of Happy. (Thank you, baby!)
Daily Hits of Happy
-Just sitting here thinking about Michael, 25 years into this relationship, still gives me the most blissed-out, giddy, feeling. I find myself staring into space, grinning like a girl with a high school crush. -It's the middle of a pandemic, we've been together for a couple of months straight, yet after a very brief separation, we talked on the phone today for an hour and a half.
-During the conversation, we shared a lot of scary, sad, unwanted news, but still managed to make each other laugh repeatedly.
Maybe being a unique, separate, human being is overrated...in the grand scheme of things.
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