Don't Let Your Day Fuck Up Your Night

For some reason, it's a heavy fucking week.

I'm carrying a lot right now. The weight of leadership, making decisions that impact other people's lives. The weight of watching bad decisions persist, then having to communicate those decisions as though they were my own, even after I've argued exhaustively against them. The weight of knowing that sometimes, no matter how hard you push, how carefully you explain, or how much experience you bring to the table, somebody else gets to make the fucking call.

And then there's the one-year anniversary of my motorcycle crash. A year since somebody else's thoughtless decision turned my life upside down and sent me down a road of pain, surgeries, rehabilitation, and recovery that I'm still traveling in some ways.

So yeah, I'm carrying a lot on my fucking shoulders.

But here's the thing. I don't want to carry it home.

I don't want a bad day at work, in a place that feels like an entirely different fucking world from the one I share with Dawna, to determine how I walk through our front door at night. I don't want the frustration, the exhaustion, or the weight of decisions made by people who will never sit at our dinner table to dictate the mood in our home.

When I walk through that door, I want to smile. And I want that smile to be genuine, because I know there's a pretty good chance I'm about to see hers beaming back at me.

And fuck, I love that smile.

Dawna isn't my punching bag. She isn't responsible for the decisions somebody made at work, the problems I couldn't solve, or the people who managed to piss me off before lunch. It wouldn't be fair to walk through the door every evening and unload all that shit into her lap simply because she's the person who loves me enough to listen.

And frankly, what the fuck would that accomplish?

I hear people talk about getting home and bitching to their significant other about everything that went wrong during the day. The boss was an asshole. Somebody made a stupid decision. A coworker didn't do their job. The meeting was a waste of time. And suddenly the person who's been looking forward to seeing them gets to spend the evening listening to a replay of a day they weren't even fucking part of.

Why?

Now, before anybody accuses me of pretending I've always had this figured out, I haven't. I've certainly done that in past relationships. I've brought the weight of the day home, dumped it on somebody else's shoulders, and probably convinced myself I was just sharing what happened.

And there's nothing wrong with sharing your day with someone you love. Sometimes you need to talk. Sometimes you need to be heard. Sometimes the person who loves you is exactly the person you need to lean on.

But there's a difference between sharing your burdens and making somebody else carry them.

I'm in a different place in my life now. I see things differently. Maybe it's age. Maybe it's experience. Maybe it's having survived enough shit to finally understand which things deserve my energy and which things really don't fucking matter.

Whatever it is, I know this: the minutes and hours I get to spend with Dawna are precious to me.

Yes, I might be tired. I might be worn the fuck out. I might be stressed beyond anything resembling reasonable. I might have spent the entire day fighting battles I didn't choose, defending decisions I didn't agree with, or trying to lead people through circumstances I wish I could change.

But when I see her smile, something in me changes.

That's the part of my day I look forward to. Not because she fixes everything that happened before I got home, but because being with her reminds me that there's an entire life outside the place where I collect a paycheck.

And it's a pretty fucking extraordinary life.

I've been thinking a lot about mortality lately. That's probably inevitable with the anniversary of my crash approaching. A year ago, I very nearly lost the opportunity to have any more evenings at home, good or bad. That changes the way you look at an ordinary Tuesday night.

Because here's something I've come to understand: nobody is going to stand at my funeral and talk about how effectively I communicated a management decision. Nobody is going to reminisce about the direction I took a work group or how many difficult meetings I managed to navigate. Nobody is going to talk about that fucking email I sent at 4:37 on a Thursday afternoon.

At least I certainly fucking hope not.

They're going to talk about the person they knew. The laughter. The conversations. The moments we shared. The smiles they won't get to see anymore. The empty chair. The missing voice. The hole left behind when somebody they loved stopped coming home.

And Dawna? If I go first, I don't want her remembering a woman who came through the door every night carrying a bucket of somebody else's bullshit.

I want her remembering the way I smiled when I saw her.

I want her remembering the kisses. The hugs. The stupid little jokes. The evenings when we didn't do a goddamned thing except enjoy being in the same room. I want her remembering that no matter how difficult my day had been, coming home to her was something I genuinely looked forward to.

Because it fucking is.

That doesn't mean every evening is some magical romantic experience. Hell, most nights I'm exhausted. Sometimes I barely make it through dinner before I'm ready to crawl into bed. Sometimes I'm distracted. Sometimes I'm grumpy. Sometimes I fuck it up, because despite my best efforts, I'm still a human being.

But I try.

I try to leave the bullshit where it belongs. I try to remember that whatever happened at work is not Dawna's responsibility. I try to walk through the door with a smile, kiss the woman I love, wrap my arms around her, and let myself be held by her.

And I try to be present.

Not physically present while mentally replaying some stupid fucking meeting. Not sitting beside her while thinking about tomorrow's problems. Actually present, enjoying the time we have together.

Because I know something now that I didn't always appreciate.

There is no guarantee I'll get another evening.

There is no guarantee she'll get another evening.

And the thought of wasting one of the evenings we do have together because somebody pissed me off at work seems like a pretty fucking terrible trade.

I'm not saying we should pretend our problems don't exist. I'm not saying we shouldn't lean on the people who love us. That's part of being in a relationship, after all. Sometimes life is fucking hard, and having somebody beside you who genuinely gives a shit makes those difficult moments a little easier to navigate.

But I think there's a difference between coming home and saying, "Fuck, I had a hard day. Can I talk to you about it?" and walking through the door already pissed off, dragging every frustration from the last eight hours into a home that had absolutely nothing to do with creating them.

One is sharing your life with somebody. The other is allowing the worst part of your day to become the worst part of theirs.

And I don't want to do that anymore.

Maybe this is just another one of those lessons that comes from getting older. Or maybe it took getting knocked off a motorcycle and spending months fighting to reclaim the simplest parts of my life to finally understand how fucking precious those ordinary moments really are.

I don't know.

What I do know is that when I walk through that door tonight, whatever bullshit happened during the day will still be there tomorrow. The decisions I disagree with will still be decisions I disagree with. The problems I couldn't solve will still be waiting for me. And the world will continue spinning whether I spend my evening bitching about it or not.

But the evening I get to spend with Dawna tonight?

I'll never get that one back.

So I'd rather spend it smiling at her, kissing her, holding her, laughing with her, or simply sitting beside her doing absolutely fucking nothing. I'd rather spend those precious hours enjoying the woman I love than allowing people who aren't even in the fucking room to dictate how we spend our time together.

And when Death eventually comes knocking again, I don't want to look back and realize I spent the best parts of my life complaining about the worst parts of my day.

I want to remember the smiles.

The laughter.

The love.

And all those ordinary fucking evenings that turned out to be extraordinary simply because we got to spend them together.

So maybe that's my advice for the week, as I carry around the weight of leadership, the anniversary of my crash, and whatever other bullshit life decides to throw onto my shoulders: Don't let your day fuck up your night.

Because the people who love you deserve more than whatever's left of you after the world has finished kicking your ass.

And frankly, so do you.