Rock-a-bye

Three weeks in, and we are doing fine. He brings solidity and consistency into this relationship, and his patience seems quite deep, perhaps borne out of being a father to three sons who are now well into their teenage years, and after having dealt with his own share of bad relationships. And now, there is me in his life, the little old girl-princess with a clinical case of bipolar disorder and OCD. Amazingly, despite that, we are doing fine, and I write this clause a second time with a sense of awe.


Who would have known we’d hit it off so well? Even our friends are amazed. Even our officemates are amazed. Even his family is amazed. And I’m sure my own family will be amazed. But I suppose that’s just one more proof that there is no formula for loving. No matter where he’s from, no matter where I’m from, if the constellation of events leads us to meeting, then that’s that. After all, men do come from another planet, and he is one bona-fide Martian to the core: guns, war games, actual wars, simulation exercises with various special forces, a smoker who doesn't drink alcohol and who almost never gets sick, a fan of rock music, steeped in tactics and logic, a pillar of sense, integrity, loyalty, and security.

He has made me more stable, too. Now I am off some of my psychiatric meds, which have been replaced with laughter -- thanks to his hilarious stories about his cuckoo friends and their war games bloopers -- and my mood swings are not so bad anymore. I am hardly ever angry these days, and if something at work annoys me, I just call him or meet him for break time coffee and rant for a while, and then he says something to make me laugh, and then I can go back to my office and pick up where I left off, cool as wind, smiling through the initial drudgery/setback/nuisance, and come up with better solutions. I can also write again, and it is a credit to my clients, bosses, professors, and editors that they have acknowledged my dark phase as only a phase, and they have patiently waited it out, and now I can finally give them some of the best work that I have ever done.


I sincerely hope that I also give him something good, too. I hope I inspire him to become more creative and productive. I sincerely wish to make him happy, to make him feel free to do the things that he loves, to make him see that the right relationship with the right person can be a very liberating thing. I hope he feels that his world is now larger because of me, and that he now has an abundance of wide open spaces in which he can be himself, without any judgement from me, and that it is possible to be completely honest and transparent in a relationship without the partnership crumbling into pieces. We have taken all the lessons that we have learned from relationships past, and together, we have changed the game of our lives.


So there. Almost immediately after my "single again" post, in which I said that I still believe I deserve love and I still expect to get it someday, I did get it, faster than I expected -- and believe me, this dude is fast. But I suppose it's the right way to deal with this, because once you've found the person that you want to spend the rest of your life with, then you'd want the rest of your life to begin right away. Three weeks in, he has made so many changes in his life in order to accommodate me, has walked the extra mile to make me feel wanted and accepted and loved, and his family and friends are simply darlings to accept me that quickly. Our journey together won't be completely smooth and perfect; there are bound to be some stumbles along the way, but I sincerely hope we can make it. He is my lullaby, my security blanket, my safe haven. Because he's here now, I know that everything is okay.

[Image credits: 1, 2, 3]