She's one of my all time favorite people - definitely in my top
ten, actually more like my top three. I
lovebeing
with her. I
lovebeing
around her. All my memories of every past time with her go straight to
the heart.
In my
relationship
with her (which is to say in my
friendship
with her) I know real, thrilling
love,
a
love
that's made me a better man, a better
human being
for having known it.
We were talking one day, relaxed in the comfort of each other's
presence,
reveling in the simple joy of just
being
together ... when suddenly something inexplicable
happened,
something you may
relate
to (and probably will), something you may recognize as one of the least
pleasant concomitants of
being human.
I said something essentially great which, not
spokenclearly
enough, was left
open
to being misinterpreted - which is exactly what she did. Then my
response to her misinterpretation only compounded the error and made it
worse ... and all of a sudden our easy
conversation
became (as if all by itself ie as if out of
control) a full blown
reactivated
argument, a nasty confrontation, an ugly
incident which for the
life of me seemed to take on a direction all of it's own, a direction I
certainly didn't want it to go in - and yet that's the direction it
went in, sweeping both of us along with it. One minute there was
love
- the next minute there was a complete and total breakdown of
communication.
Right in the middle of it, there seemed to be
nothing
I could do about it except be swept along by it like a twig in a
tsunami.
Somehow we got through the day. But try as I might, the fog of
reactivation
hung thick in the air. At the end of the day after she'd gone. I felt
washed up and alone - literally, like a castaway unceremoniously dumped
by
powerful
tides on an inhospitable desert island. Yet if there's any consolation
about arguments between people who
love
each other, it's that there's less investment in wanting to be right,
and a bigger interest in simply wanting to get over and past
whatever happened.
Clearly
something
happened.
And the more I looked at it, the
clearer
it became: I said this, she misinterpreted it as that, I got defensive
and instead of cleaning things up, I inadvertently made them worse, to
which she also got defensive ... you know how it goes: a downward
spiral in which everybody loses.
I wasn't
interested
in being right about
what happened.
OK, I wasinterested
in being right for about a minute (I am
machinery
too - no surprise there), after which all I was
interested
in was getting our
love
back on track. I resolved to contact her and make sure the air (ie
our air) got
cleared.
But amazingly, before I contacted her, she contacted me and suggested
we talk (I say "amazingly" because not only didn't I expect it, but I
would have totally understood it if she didn't contact me). So we set
aside time to talk - which we did: by phone, for almost an hour and a
half.
There's
no greater healer
than
conversation.
We talked about everything,
walking
back everything that
happened
(which is to say
walking
back everything that was said) leaving
nothing
out. To everything I said, I experienced her
listening
without judgement. I too was able to hear everything she said without
judgement. There wasn't one moment of argument. There wasn't one moment
without total mutual respect. She told me
what happened
for her, and I told her
what happened
for me. What's
interesting
is although we were obviously describing the same event, each of our
versions of it were markedly different - that is to say, we each
created
our own version of it, markedly differently.
"What happened"
for each of us, is always a function of what we each uniquely say
happened.
What I said to her in that hour and a half, wasn't more important than
what she said to me, and what she said to me, wasn't more important
than what I said to her. We're equals. The thing is that everything got
said, and in the space of everything being said and out in the
open,
it all
cleared up.
Our
relationship
is in better shape now than it ever was before (I know that's hard to
believe
because it was in such good shape before ... but it's
true).
What's great about this, is secondarily
how
everything got handled with dignity and respect, and is now
complete,
over, and in the past. But primarily, what's great about this is it
underlines how many solid walls we can actually
walk
through with
conversationcoming from
love,
and how little of value we can get done without it. Also, I can now
take this revised,
completedphotograph
(if you will) of the incident, and paste it over
the original
one that
happened
(I actually prefer this version).