Drama Thrives in the Dark

It was Sunday morning, just a few days ago. I was sitting next to a woman I love, who I’m trying to be with for the rest of my life. We were laughing with our neighbor's kid, an adorable two-year-old who only knows how to express exactly how he’s feeling every second.

We were watching his joy. We were watching our own two boys play with him, running through some ridiculous sprinkler that my kids bought with their allowance. All of them giggling, jumping, and wiggling.

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It was perfect.

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I was just there with her, witnessing this little kid delight.

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My wife and I earned this moment together. By learning. By gritting our teeth sometimes and just showing up again the next day. By doing little things better, a little at a time.

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Social media and dinner parties are full of performative relationships. We put on our best faces and try to convince everyone we’re great, even when, especially when, we most certainly are not.

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It’s normal. It’s ok. I’m not going to change that.

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But I know that when things were really hard, all those best faces made me feel like it was just us going wrong. Maybe I was fundamentally bad at marriage. Maybe I chose the wrong person.

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Drama thrives in the dark.

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It would have helped me to know that others had hard times for similar reasons. It would have helped me to know that getting through it was possible. That one day in my future I would be sitting next to her, feeling very alive and in love and laughing and enjoying the simplest of things.

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