When Ours Becomes Mine Again

I find myself really, really sad this morning.

Today, Dawna goes back to Colorado.

Nothing is wrong. That's probably important to say. We didn't have an argument. There isn't some problem lurking beneath the surface. Nobody is storming out. Nobody is reconsidering anything.

Hell, two nights ago I asked this woman to marry me.

She said yes.

I'm happier than I have any fucking right to be.

And I'm really, really sad.

Because for the last several days, Dawna has been here. Not visiting, exactly. At least it hasn't felt like visiting. She's been living here. Existing here. Becoming part of the rhythm of this house and, somewhere along the way, quietly changing what the word home means to me.

It's all the little things I've already written about.

The deodorant on the bathroom counter.

The garage door opening before I can get my keys out because she heard me coming home.

The smile waiting for me on the other side.

The excitement on her face when I walk through the door.

Yesterday, she rearranged the bedroom.

Our bedroom.

That's what it is now.

Not mine.

Ours.

And fuck, that distinction matters more than I ever thought it would.

For a very long time, this house has been mine. My stuff. My routines. My mess. My motorcycles in the garage. My clothes in the closet. My side of the bed, which was really just whichever fucking side I happened to fall into because the entire thing belonged to me anyway.

There was freedom in that.

I've spent a lot of my life valuing that freedom.

But then this woman started leaving pieces of herself here.

A stick of deodorant.

Some clothes.

Her things mixed in with mine.

Her ideas about where things should go.

Her presence in rooms that used to belong only to me.

And instead of feeling like something was being taken away from me, it felt like something was being added.

Those little things lift my spirits in ways I don't entirely know how to explain.

Having her here feels so goddamned right.

I think I even felt the universe nod its approval.

And that makes today so much fucking harder.

I know she has a life in Colorado. I know she can't simply abandon everything she's been doing because we finally pulled our heads out of our asses and realized we belong together. I know there are things that have to be rearranged, decisions that have to be made, logistics that have to be figured out.

I know all of this intrinsically because I'm not a fucking dumb person.

But unfortunately, I am an incredibly emotional being.

I'm a fucking Cancer through and through.

I'm not entirely sure what time I was born, but I believe it was early in the morning, and every chart anyone has ever done for me seems to put me somewhere in triple-Cancer territory.

So, you know. Tears on tears on fucking tears.

Logic can explain to me all day long why Dawna needs to go back to Colorado.

My heart doesn't give a shit.

My heart just knows that she's here now, asleep in the bed beside me, and sometime today she won't be.

And the house is going to feel different.

That's the part that's getting to me.

I honestly don't know where we're headed from here or exactly how we're going to get there.

That's uncomfortable for me.

In my professional world, knowing where we're headed and figuring out how the fuck we're going to get there is literally my job. Give me a complicated problem, a bunch of constraints, some people, and an objective, and I'll start building a path.

But this?

This is matters of the heart.

Scary, uncharted fucking waters.

There isn't a project plan for this. There isn't a schedule. There isn't some neat little sequence of milestones where I can point at a box and say, Okay, we're here. Next we do this.

There are two lives.

Two homes.

Two careers.

Two people who spent a long time building lives independently and have now decided they want to build one together.

We'll figure it out.

And strangely, for someone like me, I don't think I really care what the final plan looks like.

I care who I'm making it with.

I fucking love her.

She owns my heart and my soul.

So here I sit this morning, fully dressed and clanking away at the keyboard while the woman I love sleeps in the bed beside me. In a few minutes, I'll close the laptop, walk downstairs, climb onto Nyx, and head up to work.

Later today, Dawna will go back to Colorado.

And I'll come home.

The garage door probably won't open before I reach for my keys.

There won't be that grin waiting for me when I ride inside.

I'll walk upstairs into the bedroom she rearranged yesterday, and she'll be everywhere.

But she won't be there.

Fuck.

I know I'll survive it.

I know she'll survive it.

We're both survivors. Surviving is what we fucking do.

But maybe that's not really the point anymore.

I've done enough surviving.

I don't just want to survive until the next time I see her.

I want the deodorant on the counter.

I want the garage door opening.

I want her shit mixed with my shit.

I want our bedroom.

I want our house.

I want our life.

And this morning, while she's still asleep beside me, I'm already mourning the temporary return of mine.

Because ours feels so much fucking better.