How long have we been dancing the dance? Do you remember? I think the real dancing started about four years ago. To be fair and completely honest, the dancing was always there. It was in the background at times, but it was always there.
You do know the dancing I’m talking about, right? It’s what has become our traditional relationship dance. I think we unknowingly started this dance; it wasn’t intentional. We did what we needed to do to, right? Is that how you remember the dance starting? There were times family interfered with our relationship. We each pacified the other. I know I felt stuck in the middle and I’m sure you did as well. Looking back, I wish we would have had the ability to cope with the interference and stop the dancing. But we danced around the problems, hoping they would just disappear. While it wasn’t always looming over our shoulders, the dancing was still happening in the background; waiting for a weak moment to speed up the tempo, to make one of us feel weak, vulnerable, unsettled. We did the best we could, right?
I think there was a time, and it probably was about four years ago, where the dancing pattern we are in now started. I would talk to you about needing help with decisions, kids, money, day to day stuff. I would talk, you would listen. I would get frustrated and stop talking. You waited me out, at least that’s how I felt/feel. You waited until I could no longer take the awkward silence, the no talking. I would break my silence, and everything would eventually go back to our normal dancing. It’s odd now that I think about it. I couldn’t stand living in the awkward silence, so I broke. But there was still silence, just a different kind of silence. It was the silent song of our dance. Our dancing pattern happened when, like every three or six months? The dance always started and ended the same way. I feel like I tried over and over again. Do you feel that way? Like you tried over and over again? I guess it doesn’t matter.
We are still dancing. Now we dance around each other. We dance around talking, touching, feeling. What happens when the dance ends? What happens when one of us stops dancing? What if it’s you? What if it’s me? Does it look different or feel different?
Do we continue to live in the comfortable uncomfortableness that surrounds us daily because living in the comfortable uncomfortableness is easier than moving our lives into the unknown uncomfortableness. Is that anyway to live? How do we continue to avoid what is right in front of our faces?
I feel like you are living in the shadows of the three wise monkeys; see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. If you turn a blind eye to what is happening to us, you don’t have to worry about anything. If you refuse to hear what I am saying over and over, you don’t have to worry about anything. If you refuse to speak to me about what is happening to us, you don’t have to worry about anything.
But I have a question.
What happens when one of us steps off the dance floor?
How do I...life? 