Relationships - Stepping off the edge.

Relationships

There are many twists and turns in a relationship. Often, the corridors leading to different doors are not the wide straight aisles like a grocery stores’, they’re not smooth like marble tiled floors of luxurious hotels, they’re not lined with trees that provide shade from the elements and add aesthetic value.

Instead they are steep paths descending from the highest waterfall, nearly vertical, descendible on faith and wit, the paths narrow and widen with so much frequency those who travel them cannot for one second take anything for granted. Some bridges that connect two areas of relationships are rickety and have to be crossed by looking straight ahead, forget the maelstrom below.

And then there are the doors; the hidden destinations, places to rest briefly when one finishes an ascent up a steep slope of broken trust, when the door provides respite from the constant need to prove your affection and one is merely receiving it. There are doors that hide the tastelessness of fear wrought by an impending end of a chapter, when you both do not know if a door leading on will open; whether or not you will have a chance to leave this terrible room with its suffocating fears and many unknowns. When you find the door it opens up to a room of pillows, a room of abounding love when you both feel insulated from the hurts of the world. When everything is light and pillow fights are like puffs of clouds gently caressing you as you both laugh. In this room you are rewarded for walking with faith through the rickety bridge, for taking that leap of faith, for ignoring the maelstrom.

But eventually, this room of pillows is delivers its ultimate deceit, while it kept the hurt from the outside, it forgot to protect you from each other. A forgotten clothes pin, found in the lining of the cushion snakes out to jab one of you in the eye. You don’t want to believe it, but your better half is suddenly your bad cop.

Blinded, you fumble through the room of pillows, your blood flowering in pretty patternes on the whites of the clouds and claw along the wall, in search of a door leading on. You are praying this door will lead to another rickety bridge, you hope over that bridge there is another room of pillows. But often, as you step out the door, your eyes unseeing and the pin still in your eye, you know there is no bridge.

You’ve stepped over the edge.

What you find as you hit the bottom is your choice.

Is it a rock?

Or is it a cushion?

Relationships, how they begin and how they end is often the same. And when you stepped over the first edge, you fell on a cushion, and began your walk through the rickety bridges and the steep paths. You walked with determination because you knew someone was with you, ready to give you a leg up. When you walk out the edge this time, will you be able to face the walk, even if it to have a relationship with yourself?