I wonder if I’m the only one who actually enjoys getting older. Not the process of aging, exactly, but the process of moving forward. Of getting to know myself.

I think of it as being in a long committed relationship with myself. When I was younger, I was more fickle. Ready to discard my selves in search of new and better ones. I concentrated on my faults, envied other people’s relationships. Me and Myself never lasted very long. We had a lot of baggage that we passed back and forth, some trust issues, occasional name-calling, too. I think maybe I didn’t know what I wanted in a person. Attracted to the wrong things, repelled by something small and shallow. So far, nothing I wanted to fully invest in. Afraid to really let myself go, the fear of disappointment and being locked in a path, simultaneously crushing me from the start.

Sometimes we’d be lying in bed, eyes closed, door closed, the world closed to nothing but us, a moment away from slipping into dream, our other consciousness where only Me and Myself exist, and I’d think…”you are not the one.”

Not that we didn’t have magnificent days. I could tell you some stories—we egged each other on, did some crazy shit together. Me and Myself were like this. In sync. Our gears oiled and greased up, ready to crank. Hands in each other’s back pockets. And I thought hell yea, this is what it’s all about.

But like all brief and explosive relationships, we’d come to a blinding halt. And I’d have to start all over. Meanwhile, others would pass me by, unforgivingly happy and successful. At least that’s how it seems, right, whenever we see those people? And we make ourselves feel better by scoffing, our struggle makes us “deeper.”

*

I’m not sure how exactly it happened. It’s like those smug couples that say to their single friend, “You can’t go looking for a relationship; it’ll happen when you least expect it.” That’s great, really helpful, thanks. I suppose it’s sort of true. You can’t snatch at the first thing that comes along and force it to be yours. But it’s part of getting older to let the riff-raff go by. After years of bouncing against myself, trying to fit between the rigid lines, and then scaling the walls to flee, I learned to relax and let myself be me. And by relax, I don’t mean give up, become slack, or lower my expectations. Strangely enough, I have more momentum. Like if you’re gripping the bat, muscles tense, you won’t hit the ball that far, but if you’re loose and relaxed, you can whip that bat around and let it fly…

*

So I finally took the plunge. I asked Myself to be my life partner and she said yes. It was rough at first. We had to get used to the idea that we wouldn’t run out on each other when things got sticky. Definitely had a few blow-out fights, crying and slammed doors and everything. But with each one, we learned a little more. Our idiosyncrasies, what set us off, how to avoid escalating the situation. You could say, we learned how to fight. As soon as we realized this, fights between Me and Myself became bumps in the road and no longer Crises. This was a relief. The household felt more sane.

Now that we’re committed, another year is a positive thing. Not another nail in the coffin that I’m desperately trying to pry loose. Like any relationship, a slight amount of delusion is necessary to make it till the end. But for the most part, we’re going for honesty. It wastes less time. We know we are not all-encompassing. We believe in our strengths. We find others to fill in where one of us lacks. We slowly figure out how to get what we want. And every year we know more than we did before.

It’s almost as if we can read each other’s mind.