Recently J-Man and I were watching some sitcom that mentioned Elliot Smith music and I had an instant flashback to sophomore year of college - not my brightest hour. J-Man had no idea who Elliot Smith was, and I informed him that I used to listen to Say Yes, amongst other slow, sad melodies, on repeat during that angsty, dramatic time. I brushed over the confusion that was college for me, giving only the details necessary to the story this time, and played the song for him.
He wasn't really feeling it.
Maybe because it was from a sad part in my life? More likely because that's not really his style of music. He is, after all, a gangsta.
So we then listened to a song I knew he had listened to in his own confusing days, which actually had a hook and rap and a beat. Maybe I would've been cooler if that had been my depressed music?
I looked at him and told him how I'm so glad to have him, and I wish I had known he existed back when I let my emotions get screwed up by losers. The conversation got quiet for a moment. We thought back to our private darker moments. The ones we brush off now because thank goodness they feel like light years away, but the same ones that once felt crushing and all-encompassing and impossible to overcome at the time.
The first night J-Man and I began the transition from neighbors to maybe-more-than-friends was a summer night at his apartment. After a general gathering of the teacher folks, everyone else left to go enjoy bars that don't close until 4am. He and I stayed behind, just talking.
Talking, I swear.
Before I knew it I was telling him things I don't tell people. The experiences most of us have in some form or another that just aren't pleasant dinner conversation. The insecurities and secrets that make us who we are, even if 99.9% of the world never hear about them.
I shared mine and he shared his.
He told me I was strong, a word I've cherished from him for five years now, and a part of my jaded heart began to melt a little.
We watched The Graduate with my head on his lap and him patting my hair the wrong direction. We held hands. We stayed awake until 6am. Without a single kiss we became intimate in the deepest way.
Since that night we sometimes return to conversations about the darker hours of our lives. We talk about how we've been shaped by them, and how we connected as a couple because of them. We discuss how most of our closest friends have shared some degree of their personal pains with us too, and how, for better or worse, that is a part of how we've become friends. There is a bond in shared pain, even in the past.
Sometimes we've talked about our hypothetical children, before these last few weeks where there's been a real child to discuss, and how we will survive knowing they will experience pain. How someone will one day hurt them, break their hearts, or their bodies, or they will hurt their own. How they may have days or weeks or years that they look in the mirror and, for whatever reason, hate what they see. How we may accidentally feed into some aspect of that.
We wonder if we'll be able to remember that so long as they survive, and are strong, and surround themselves with the kinds of people we surrounded ourselves with, then they'll find intimate bonds of friendship and love because of it.
I hope I'll remember that. Almost as much as I hope they don't feel any such pain. But knowing what I know about life and coming of age now, I mostly hope that they'll find a point where anything horrible becomes a distant memory, and life is full of hope and faith and laughter. That tomorrows are more compelling than yesterdays and friendships stronger than fears. And the crappy music they may listen to at first will no longer bring them to tears, and instead make them smile and wish they'd been more of a G all along.
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