Someday, Forever.

I think it's no secret that Yoshi and I have had our fair share of struggles, some of them in the very recent past.

Being with him is easy because we get along so well, but being in a relationship where thoughts and feelings and opinions are valued is not.  Not every day is easy.

To be honest, there have been times where I've really genuinely thought about leaving.  After we moved in together that got a little more complicated, but during the rare instances where we've had really bad fights and I get overly emotional there are still times during which a stubborn and independent part of me thinks, "Meh, I don't need you.  I can survive on my own.  I can do whatever I want.  I'll just leave, then you'll see."

But that's not how a long-term relationship works, is it?

In a long-term relationship, a real partnership that becomes a pillar on which to base your life, you don't get to just leave because there was a hard day or a hard week or they said something wrong or they didn't pick the movie you wanted.

That would be silly, not to mention a waste of a tremendous amount of effort.  Those are things you can do, in my opinion, up until your one year anniversary.  After a year you should probably be putting more thought into your reasons to leave, like you both aren't compatible on a level that matters and causes you to be unable to continue in the relationship.

I understand there are many reasons to break up.  You're monogamous and one of you cheats.  One of you becomes drug dependent.  One of you has to move for work or family.  Sometimes even family is the reason, whether they dislike your partner or your partner cannot accept your family.

I've even had moments in which I knew I had real motive to terminate my relationship, but I couldn't do it.  I wouldn't just be turning my back on the lover who had been there for me through all my issues without trying to understand him in return, but I also would have been losing my best friend.  So in the days where I was really and truly thinking about leaving I would pretend everything was fine instead.  When he was gone my heart would be breaking but when he was home I seemed okay.  Instead of going to bed and crying I would sit closer to him on the couch.  Eventually, we grew closer again emotionally, too.

I'm not saying if you're considering leaving your relationship that you shouldn't.  Each relationship you have is different and different to each person in it.

I'm saying that when I have childish thoughts about ending mine because he isn't perfect I subconsciously find reasons not to do so and things get better.  That's how I know he's right for me.

I no longer look at him with youthful eyes and think about what he could be to me.  I see him with eyes and a heart that have experienced years with him: multiple moves, illness of various types, depression, anxiety, a million meals, an equal number of miles on the road, staying up until dawn and going to bed while the sun is still in the sky in the evening...  It isn't just the initial emotions and little compatibility tests you give each other that become love; it's the milestones you celebrate, projects you complete together, and moments that pile on top of each other year after year.

When I started this blog I was just another damaged girl in her mid-twenties who figured she'd be single forever and ever.  I had finally reached a place where I was comfortable with being single and had started to accept and release what I went through with my ex,  I liked who I was and I liked my freedom.  Later that year I met Yoshi and a year after that we started dating.

The secret is that I never really thought the relationship between the girl who always dated older guys and the dude four years younger who always dated younger girls would last.  I thought it would just be hanging out, maybe some decent sex, and then it would fizzle.  Somewhere along the line we started learning how to be with each other and really working at it because neither of us was willing to give up on the fun we had together.

So, yes.  There have been rough patches.  There will be more.  I don't think either of us would be happy if there wasn't some kind of challenge in being together.  But there will also be more moments that I will never forget and moments that I will forget that I thought I never would.  Somehow the negative never piles up as high as the positive.  I think that is as it should be.

I can't say for sure there won't be a day in the future that one of us says we can't do this anymore, but I can say that if that day did come it wouldn't be a surprise to either of us.  There would have been a lot of damage along the road we took to get to that place.

I think it's more likely we'll wake up in our seventies and wonder where the last 50 years went and how they could have passed us by so quickly.

Who knows?

That's for Future Bunny to worry about.

The Cork.

I know I said I wasn’t going to talk about him anymore. But I lied.

Sorry.

At least I’m honest about it. About the unintentional lying. Usually if I lie it’s on accident.

The more I write and am able to sort through my feelings, the more I let go of the person I made him out to be in my head. The person that was easy to hate. The more I let that person go, the harder it is not to miss the person he (for the most part) was. The more I write about it, the easier it is to talk about everything. Even the good things, which are somehow harder to talk about and remember than the bad.


On this date four years ago we officially became a couple. Three years ago we went to Santa Cruz for Fourth of July and our anniversary. We came back home Sunday night and had champagne and pizza for celebratory dinner.

I still have the commemorative cork from the champagne. I brought it with me when I moved out.

You’d think after all this time I would have thrown it out. After how hurt and scared and angry I was. For nearly three years.

But no.

I still have it.





I think this is a pretty clear indicator that I will always have love for him.

I guess maybe I should explain why I would ever miss the person I spoke about here, in the series of posts that probably made you want to kill him. But in all reality, I would not have stayed with him through all the fighting and abuse if there was not some kind of redeeming factor.

And there was.

It was love.

Not just my love for him, but the way that he loved me. That’s why it still hurts. Love so deep, my heart is permanently scarred.

I suppose if we hadn’t cared we wouldn’t have fought. And we definitely cared. There was a lot of unhealthy dependence on each other and some addiction issues that had absolutely nothing to do with drugs or alcohol.

Imagine dating your best friend in the world.

You could spend days together and still not be tired of each other. You have so many inside jokes that you might as well be speaking another language much of the time. You make each other laugh and understand why the other person is the way they are. But you are also completely attracted to each other physically.

Maybe it was because he was really A.D.D. and a little spastic and immature, but he was the only boyfriend I’ve ever had who could keep me occupied for longer than a couple of months. I never got bored. He wasn’t predictable, which is apparently really important for me. I think it’s because I sometimes tend to be unpredictable, so people who can't keep up bore me. Plus, we were both stuck somewhere between ages five and eighty, never settling on a particular age to be. Just generally choosing all of them with great inconsistency.

He was one of the few people in my life who actually understood me. The downside to that is that he knew how to really easily push my buttons and, since I was on-edge already, he could easily send me into crazy-lady screaming freak-out mode. Sometimes he did it on purpose because he was a dick. Sometimes on accident. And sometimes we would have a full-on raging fight because I refused to dispose of bacon grease and he would leave it in the pan for me to deal with when I did the dishes. (That was kind of a complicated recurring fight.)

The times that we weren’t fighting were good (no, fantastic) enough that it took me months to move out even after shit had hit the fan.

I wish I had known then that he wouldn’t stop for me because he needed to stop for himself. We both needed to learn to love ourselves more than other people. To do things for ourselves and not each other.

I wish I could have been mature enough to ignore his picking and not fight. I wish he had been mature enough to stop picking.

I think I can safely say that, if given the chance to go back and do it all again, we’d do things very differently now than we did at the time.

But, then, hindsight is always 20/20, isn’t it?


So now you know. Despite all the time I spent hating and fearing him, Bambi will always have a special place in my heart. A place no one else will ever take over. Which basically means I’m screwed and I’m going to end up a lonely old lady with lots of cats. Unless I somehow become a famous opera singer.

A girl can dream.