Sometimes things have to get real hard to become real simple

So, in recent years, a lot of people have started to talk about things like "simplifying their lives" and "and getting back to basics." I've come to assume they mean things like downsizing homes, offloading responsibilities, cooking foods from scratch or only wearing earth tones. I never really thought about what these things might mean to me.

I haven't made it a secret that the last few years in the Blanchard household have been kind of tough, and that a lot of unpleasant, and unexpected things have happened. We certainly haven't been the only ones, but when you're in the thick of it, you frequently walk through your existence with blinders on. You can only take on so much, and when your plate is full of your own stuff, you start to be very choosy about the stuff from other people you can deal with, even if you care about them very much.

I would completely own that I reached a point where I was so overwhelmed by the complications and pain in my own life, that I found myself no longer able to fit anything else on my plate. I know that I lost friends as a result. It's not something I'm proud of, and I have found myself thinking about it more than a little bit lately. It's hard to reach out to people who are done reaching back. And in some ways, I have come to realize that these losses are the collateral damage of a war I was neither equipped to fight, nor successful at. Sometimes, things just can't be repaired.

A few months ago, I left a job I had been doing for fifteen years. I had been wanting to leave for a long while, but would never give myself permission. It brought a lot of unhappiness to my family. I had worked very hard, and I had been raised to believe that if I just did a really good job and worked very hard that I could achieve anything. That was naive, and it perpetuated a deep feeling of resentment when that belief was proven wrong. It was difficult to accept that in many situations, relationships are more important than values and work.

As the months that preceded my departure leveled more personal disappointments, my professional disappointments were also more difficult to ignore. My husband found himself looking for a job in a different location, and I found myself expecting a child and not even remotely interested in looking for the same work in a different place. I no longer believed that I could give what the work deserved, and I knew that many days, I was barely floating along. It's hard to accept a sense of failure in yourself, no matter how real or unreal that failure appears to others.

We ended up moving to a place where I know one or two people, but I spend most of my time at home with our dog. I have a handful of dear friends and a couple of family members who check in on me regularly. Until this move, I was used to talking to people all day long. It wasn't always easy. I'm an introvert by nature.

In the few months since our move, however, there is one person I see more often than ever, and whom I miss more whenever he isn't around--my husband. I knew that with his traditional schedule and with my very non-traditional schedule that we didn't spend much time together over the last fifteen years. For a great many of those years, I found myself to be a "runner," always looking for something to do and someplace to go. I found it very difficult to be satisfied idling. In retrospect, I think it's because in my free time, I was alone with myself, and I wasn't really happy in my own company.

When our lives truly reached the point of unraveling at the beginning of the summer, something in me finally realized I had no choice but to just let go. It was really hard at times. I'm not the kind of person who likes to admit that I can't change certain things--especially the minds of people who came to believe that I wasn't worth salvaging. What I didn't understand was that like any time that happens in life, there would be people who remembered, or learned who I was at my core and they would find something in me worth valuing no matter how hostile and "feral" I had become.

And even if there hadn't been anyone else, there was always Jeph. He came to be the only person who knew who I always was. He became the only person who accepted me at every single moment--broken heart and all. It was probably because (even though he wouldn't use the same words) his heart was broken too.

When we moved away from so many things and people we knew, I had no idea how I would adjust to being at home by myself so much of the time. Of course, there was the relief that I had finally allowed myself the decision to let go of something giant in my life that wasn't really working, but what would it be like to just hang out everyday? It is surprisingly simple.

A few weeks into this "experiment," Jeph came home from work and in one of the worst weeks of my pregnancy, I broke down. It would probably amuse most people to know that this break down was over food--specifically not being able to eat it, and getting sick cleaning up after it. I know he thought it was something more. He looked at me very pointedly and asked if I was really okay being here by myself so much of the time. Without reservation, I told him I was.

Other than knowing myself well enough to know how truly introverted I am, I also have come to know that the reason I am okay is because through some weird stroke of fate (or strokes, given all of the pot holes in life's road that we have come across), I finally have everything I ever needed.

No, I don't have an income, and I am slowly, but surely scraping the bottom of what I earned in the last weeks of my work. I may get out of the house once a week. I hear from a couple of people just about every week, usually via Facebook or text. And the only person I see everyday is Jeph.

But all of that is okay, especially the last thing--I get to see Jeph everyday. It seems that while everything else in my life seemed to sort of unravel, we are the one thing that became stronger. And in the months ahead, when I will be at home with our new daughter, and be even less able to get out and about, that one face I see everyday will quite simply and basically be even more important--if that's even possible.

Wild Honey--U2

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