A Memoir of the Hammer - A Memoir of the Nail

In the last dozen or so years, I have lived the experience of waking up alone. Alone in the world, alone in my life, alone in my dreams. It is a very cold existence. It would keep me in a cloud of sadness for hours, like some weighted blanket of gloom. This created a space inside of me.

When I wake up today after a long nap, I can go back to that space. Then I remind myself that I am married. I am married to a beautiful and bewitching woman who is just as exhilarated with me as I with her.

That part is crucial. I have loved many women in my life but never as deeply and as set in alignment as I am with Julie.

In other words, either I thought I was in one situation and the other person thought they were in a different arrangement or, worse, one of us would be fully committed, the other would be looking out of the corner of their eye for something better.

Thankfully I’ve been on both sides of that equation. Life can be so much richer when we spend a little time as the hammer and a little time as the nail. So, laying myself bare and allowing myself to be publicly vulnerable, I have to admit that.

The exciting part of all of this is that the deeper that sadness set its way into a person’s heart, the more they will protect, honor and appreciate how delicious the reality of having a passionate and caring teammate is.

Because, for something like this to continue indefinitely, a person has to be willing to commit to a philosophy that the Japanese call kaizen. A system of trying to improve a little bit, each and every day.

It’s active listening and planning little trips and cheering each other on and drying each other’s tears and rubbing each other’s sore and aching muscles and reassuring one another in periods of anxiety and periods of sadness.

It’s no more difficult than asking oneself what they could do to be just one percent better each day. If you do this with your creative pursuits, you will get better and better. If you do this in a healthy partnership, it will get better and better.

My job in Florida was just starting to feel like something I could excel at when along came Thursday to ruin everything. I was trying so hard to rush around and pretend I was Superman that I lost the key to the warehouse. I had a very stressful ten minute drama that included waking my boss up at midnight and projecting how the other manager was going to freak out. (I work in one of those enviable situations where there’s four bosses and me.)

By the time I was driving home, long after the sun came up, I was accepting the fact that I had to find another job. It didn’t help that I work with people who enjoy watching their coworkers have panic attacks—although, this could be purely a Floridian thing.

But I knew that even if that was the case, I didn’t have to sweat Julie’s reaction. So when I called her and told her everything, and she said she didn’t care about “the stupid job,” I wasn’t surprised.

But I sure was grateful.

I don’t write about this stuff to make others jealous. I write about it because I know this reality is possible for anyone who wants it. You might have to kiss a lot of frogs, but eventually, if you refuse to sell yourself short, it can happen.

And when it does, you can be moved to tears just from waking up from a nap and realizing that you are no longer alone.

You are with your forever person.