Spoiled

This past week Michaela and I would have been celebrating 21 years together. In therapy, I was reading all Michaela’s messages from Facebook and some she penned to me privately. It made me realize I was so spoiled. Honestly so spoiled, as I had the most amazing human as my partner. I say this knowing we had issues and it took time to get to this place. We worked hard to create a deeply connected relationship.

This list came up for me on Pinterest and I went down each item and realized we did all of them. All of them.

I don’t think all of them are needed for a deeply connected relationship, but we just happened to create a life that incorporated all of these things and we did have a deep connection within our relationship.

Reading this made me think of memories associated with each thing. Going to just share a few.

Exercise - Michaela and I both had bariatric surgery. Our last 4 years, after surgery, we worked out. Together and separately as timing with work and other obligations made it hard to do every day, but we did work out together more than separately. Michaela mostly just did the bike. She would put her music on and build with the music so she was dancing with the music as she biked. I loved looking across the gym and seeing her just moving to the music and cycling her little booty off. I would also often look up from whatever machine I was on and see her smiling me. Often giving me a thumbs up or mouthing “way to go hun!”

Morning Coffee - when I saw this on the list I laughed. I am not a morning person and Michaela was so there were hours between when we got up, but we did both love coffee and almost always sat down with a cup of coffee when I got up to sit and talk what’s happening in the day, a dream, or the things that was going on in the world. I didn’t like coffee before Michaela. She was coffee obsessed and got me hooked. Now it is one of my favorite drinks.

Cook together - the majority of the time I cooked, but Sunday morning brunch was a together thing. Michaela made a fabulous omelette and great pancakes too. We would put music on, dance and sing as we cooked. I would cut up vegetables or cook sausage as she gathered eggs and got them mixed together for omelettes. We would talk, laugh, and just have fun. We found at a shop in town a little plaque that talked about couples dancing together. I can’t remember what it said now, but it hung on our wall for years until we replaced with photos Michaela took. We got it though because we did dance in the kitchen as we cooked together. We did that from our first Sunday together.

Notes - I still come across notes she left me. I know I found them when she wrote them, but left them in the spots so that I could come across them again. Now that she isn’t here - those times sometimes wreck me and also warm my heart at the same time.

Start a hobby together - Now if you know us - you know we jumped into board gaming together right into the deep end of it. I have SO MANY good memories associated with that hobby. It isn’t the only hobby we did together, but it does have good memories from our last years together.

It was around our 9th year together and I was having an issue with my back. I went to go get some x-rays. I was reading the book Poem Crazy as I waited to be taken back. Michaela was sitting there with me and when they called my name, I handed her my purse and book. While I was getting my x-ray, Michaela ended up reading some of my book. When we were heading home, she told me that she thought we should do poetry dates.

She explained what she thought a poetry date would look like and it sounded so fun. It was weird and quirky which fit us so well. We each had a journal, we went to random places just sat and noticed life going on around us, and we wrote words and phrases to create poems. We ended the date often reading each other our written words. Those dates were so amazing and the memories associated with them are precious to me.

The list of ways to create a deeply connected relationship only happens with choosing each other every day. I was so spoiled to have someone to choose us, choose me every single day together. We created a life and relationship that were amazing.