Sometime i say something to someone else because i need to hear the words myself.

Maybe people talk because they need to listen.

~

A friend called last night and we talked for a long time — an hour & forty minutes, according to my phone. I first got to know this friend with Sandi; we all met at an apartment complex picnic, where we met her and her husband.

Years went by, and their marriage didn’t last — and it’s difficult for me not to see their relationship as a darker version of ours. Theirs also had a cancer diagnosis & treatment; but instead of bringing them closer together, it led (among other things) to marital alienation. I can’t pretend to understand what went wrong, but it was disheartening to see.

Relationships & marriages: they only work when we want them to work and when we’re willing to put in the time & effort to make them work. I’m certainly no relationship expert, but i’m also not a complete failure. Part of what helped is that i qualified for psychotherapy and had regular sessions from a standout Psy. D. for ten years — that was part of what enabled me to have the relationship in the first place and then also to weather the inevitable storms.

What do we do with adversity in our lives? How do we act? We’re all going to have problems; that’s guaranteed.

Now i’m in a post-marriage and post-therapy stage of life, but it’s still really good to talk with a friend. I don’t know if i’ll have another romantic relationship in my life, but i will definitely still have friends. And i hope that i’m in a better position to help my friends now.

~

If you don’t talk to yourself (or write), then how will you know what you’re thinking?  Or you can talk to somebody else … but unless you say it or write it, then it disappears — it’s gone forever.