RELATIONSHIPS, MUSIC

In Between, There’s You and Me

And a crap ton of ohhhs

Relationships can be so good.

In my opinion, relationships are why we’re all here. We’re here to be in relationship with one other. In them, things like acceptance, vulnerability, and love are tested. In them, intimacy lives.

I can practice all these things when I’m alone. I can accept myself. I can love myself. I can even be intimate with myself. But until I can do this with someone else, it's just talking. It’s just rhetoric. It’s just theory. Where the rubber hits the road is to be able to do all these things while in a relationship with someone else.

I don’t know exactly why but people seem to open up to me about their relationships. So often I hear, “I can’t believe I’m telling you this but…”

Maybe it’s because I’m more of a listener than a talker. Maybe I just have an openness about myself. Maybe I should’ve been a therapist.

And oddly, it’s married men that seem to open up to me the most. I hear so many stories. Ones of heartache. Ones of longing. More than anything, these men want to please their wives. And too often I hear these men say that as hard as they try, they can’t seem to do so.

I know from experience this feeling can happen on both sides. As the woman in the relationship, I felt this as well.

Relationships can also be so hard.

I was thinking about all of this the other day as I drove to work. And then, the song “Alone” by Trampled by Turtles came on the radio. It seems to perfectly capture the sentiment rumbling through my head.

“You come into the world alone And you go out of the world alone But in between, there's you and me” Ohhh Ohohohoh”

We’re born. We die. And in between these bookends of life, we have relationships. The singer Dave Simonett then goes on to sing a series of ohohohs.

Ohohohs that sound like both ecstasy and agony.

Relationships. You and me. So good and yet so hard. The song is mostly filled with those ohhhs. A crap ton of ohhhs.

“The summer breezes blow so tall And the winter nights are cold and so long In between the falling leaves ohhh”

There are seasons to every long-lasting relationship. There’s a season of just the two of you. For some, there’s a season of nesting and a season of empty nesting. A season of job and location changes. A season of building and a season enjoying what’s been built.

Within all these seasons, there can be both beauty and hardship. More ohhhs.

The song then grows in momentum and intensity. It feels like the tension and struggle that can sometimes take place within a long-time relationship.

“The days and nights are killing me The light and dark are still in me”

We long for connection. We’re made for connection. Yet in that yearning for connection lies the hard work of relationship maintenance and growth — both inner and outer. We often sacrifice our sleep, our me-time, and other things we’d rather be doing in an effort to serve our partners and what’s best for the greater good of the relationship.

It’s through our relationships that we see what we need to work on. We see our wounds. We see where we may need to make some changes in our behavior and within ourselves.

“Ohhh Ohohohoh”

Yet these same relationships that cause such struggled-filled ohhhs also hold many comfort-filled ohhhs. They can be our refuge. They can ground us and be the thing we count on when the world outside wants to blow us over.

“But there’s an anchor on the beach So let the wind blow hard And bring a falling star”

Relationships.

Ohohohoh. Ohhh so hard. But ohhh so good.

kasey sparks, © 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYHMb0lm4h8

Thank you for reading. To quote Ram Dass, “We’re all just walking each other home.” If you’d like to join me on the journey, click here. If you’d like to access thousands of writers and their soul-stirring stories on Medium, click here.

more from kasey sparks…