the toughest ship to sail.....

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The hardest thing about being human is relationships with other humans.

Think about it. What gives you more joy, more sorrow, more emotional and sometimes even physical trauma than having to deal with other people?

You have to deal with relationships your entire life, from birth to death. Even when they're over, you're lugging along what's left of that relationship by yourself.

They aren't all deal-breakers. Some are really big. Some may not mean much at all. But they affect us in some way, big or small, even when we don't realize it.

There's the grown man who flipped you off in traffic for something that wasn't your fault, the one who made you feel slightly angry and slightly ashamed, the one who made you use the terms "grown" and "man" in a whole new way.

There's the sullen girl at Old Navy, the one with the pierced nose who wouldn't look you in the eye, who said "thank you" so far under her breath that you wonder why she bothered to exhale.

There's the young man at the pharmacy, the nice bright-eyed one who remembers your name and pulls your prescriptions out of the bin before you even reach the counter.

There's the coworker who randomly leaves chocolate on your desk and who makes you feel better when the image in the bathroom mirror seems harsh and cold.

There's the woman who asked you out to lunch at your new job every day until she wore you down and you said yes, the woman who eventually became your best friend ever, the kind you can call after a year and just start talking to without catching up or even having to say hello.

There's the mother who gave birth to you and raised you and loved you and will never ever let you off the hook for anything, the one you spent the most time and money talking about in therapy, the woman you most love and desire to please while you pull away kicking and screaming. She knows how to push all your buttons. Including the ones that soothe you when the world is spinning out of control.

There's the old lover you can't forget, the person you thought was the "one", the man you dreamed of building a life with.... except he chose a different life that didn't have room for you.

Then there's the person you actually married, who is the most thrilling, infuriating, fulfilling, maddening, complex amalgam of dynamics imaginable, someone who adores you and fulfills all the old dreams, surpassing them and creating new realities you never imagined.

This is the ship of your dreams, the kind that makes you say cheesy things like "My, he is yar" like Katharine Hepburn in "The Philadelphia Story."

Relationships can be unwieldy, unpredictable, uncertain. Especially when they lose power. But when they are tended to, well oiled, stoked, and regularly taken out for some fun....my, they are yar.

Hopefully I can continue to learn and perfect the handling of that kind of ship.