I Knew it Would Happen

I'm getting worse about posting. It's amazing. The busier I get and the more I have to write about, the less I feel like I need to be writing. I don't feel lost like I was feeling. I don't feel alone. I can tell you it all stems from a moment over the weekend (really the past five days in general). But this one moment meant the world to me. When his family asked M when he was moving down there, he replied, without skipping a beat, "In 14 months when Mel's done with this job."

The other night as I sat and listened to him get lost in music I had a Faulkner-ian stream of consciousness moment. And I wrote this:

Compromise

Can mean two very different things. You’re supposed to compromise when you’re young. It’s kind of like sharing. Being somewhere in the middle between where you want to be and where someone else wants to be. Compromise when you’re older means you’re giving something up for someone or something else. You compromise your morals, you compromise your dreams. You compromise the possibilities for your own future. Or maybe…maybe you go back and you compromise the same way you did when you were a kid. You compromise with someone or something to make something bigger or better than you had planned. But you have to have a medium. Your final wants can’t be so far apart that there’s not medium between the two. There’s a happy compromise.

I wrote it for me. It was a thought in my head and I put it into words. Not even eloquent words. Just statements to help me clear the echos of ideas from my head. M tried to peek over my shoulder while I was typing, but I stopped him. I told him I might change my mind later. When he asked me again, I reluctantly agreed. There's a big difference between sharing this with the internet where no one knows me and letting him read it. Especially when it is so explicitly about us. I didn't ask him what he thought, and he didn't offer his opinion, other than saying, "I'm glad you let me read that."

Then we talked about possibilities. Potential. The future. Our future. I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the "our future" that I toss around in my head all day to not be anywhere close to the future that he has planned for himself. I'm starting to understand (after nearly a year) I can let my guard down. Our future is a mutual vision. Our future is a compromise that will lead us to something bigger and better than I could ever imagine. I'm scared of what people will say, of how this is going to affect the happiness of others who are invested in my well being. However, I'm on the doorstep of my 25th year and facing yet another year of dependency on my parents. Maybe it is time to take a leap toward compromise. It's not so much of a scary leap anyway, when you know who is waiting there to catch you.