Now that I knew love, I began to get comfortable. The drive to get something accomplished had begun to diminish, somewhat. I was sharing my time with someone else now. It became easier to let go of some of my selfish dreams and work on building dreams that were made to share.
Not that I ever wanted to become a recording artist purely to satisfy myself. I had always planned on giving away most of the money I would have earned. For a while, I thought that was my mission. Sell a million records . . . use the money to feed the world. The selfish part, I thought, was making someone else give up their dreams to help me.
My goal now was to enjoy being in love. My husband and I would find a way to pool our resources, building a dream that would boost our bank account and our egos. We went into business for ourselves. It started out fine. We were gaining a reputation of a hardworking team that could get the job done!
The type of business we were in required us to pay for the materials we needed in advance, and then wait to be reimbursed later. Well, when the economy takes a turn for the worse, doing business that way makes it hard to put food on the table. We went from installing windows into new homes, to cutting new glass for old windows, to just cutting grass. We had to make a change. Maybe move to a new area where there was more work available. We could find something to do just to pay the bills until something better came along!
We moved. We found jobs. We went to work. We came home. We paid bills, and we ate. We didn't like it, but we did it. We told ourselves that we were doing what had to be done, in order to survive. It was only temporary after all, and we would find something better, once we got on our feet.
He went off to his job every day, daydreaming all the way there about what he really wanted to do with his life. I went off to my job, thinking about dinner, laundry and "was I going to be able to afford Christmas presents for the kids this year?" We had become the average American family. Dysfunctional.
We stopped communicating somewhere on our daily commute, and lost touch with what had brought us together in the first place. Instead of staying up all night, talking for hours about our dreams for the future, we barely made eye contact as we passed each other in the hallway. Was this it? Was this all there was? It seemed like the boy that couldn't go a day without seeing me, had become a man that couldn't see me standing right in front of him.
I took a good look at myself. I couldn't see me either. It was like I had reverted to that teenager who thought she had nothing worthwhile to say. Keeping everything inside. How was I supposed to keep my husband interested in me? I wasn't very interesting. What happened to all of that drive? The only driving I was doing, was taking my relationship the wrong way on a one-way street. A crash was inevitable.
The voices that had been quiet when my relationship with my husband began, returned. "What now?" I asked. "Can't you see I am trying to fix something here?" "I am trying to figure out what went wrong!" "Maybe," I thought, "if I pick up that old guitar and strum for a while, something will come to me."
I started playing the songs that had helped me get through some painful emotions in the past. "These songs are pretty good!" I thought. They really say something. The person who wrote these must have been pretty interesting. She really had a way with words. Why, if people listened to what she had to say, they might just learn something! Hey! Wait a minute! She was me! No wonder my husband couldn't see me anymore. I wasn't there.
Well, I was back! Now, I just needed to let him know that. I needed to tell him that we had fallen into a rut, but we were about to climb out of it! We had dreams to ride after, and it was time to get back in the saddle. I needed to make him see me.
I needed to make him . . .
. . . listen to me.