Three out of four...

My last Valentines Day with Sawan, I got up earlier than him for work.  I kept waiting for him to rouse from the bed, to wake up and kiss me, to tell me Happy Valentines Day, to maybe get up and make coffee while I was in the shower, but he never did.  Our plans for the day were not really to celebrate, I had to work, then he had to work that night, we weren’t even going to see each other at all.  So when he made no move to acknowledge me at all, before I left for work I picked a huge fight.

In my grief I spend a lot of time thinking about things I would have done differently.  I feel a lot of guilt and I beat myself up about things that I made a big deal about, that, if I had known how it was all going to work out, I wouldn’t have cared about.  I wonder sometimes if Valentines Day is one of them.  If I had known, would it have mattered?  Probably not.  We’ll never know. 

The thing is, I didn’t know.  And at the time, it did matter.  He did hurt me.  I’m not sure why I’m using myself as a punching bag over this.

I read a quote recently that said something like “You can’t judge a relationship by the last conversation.  Relationship is the sum of all of the conversations,” and then I was reminded of the same thing by a friend today, that I can’t focus on one fight…my relationship was about all of the fights and all of the make-ups.

So I’m choosing.  I’m choosing to remember the good parts, and choosing not to beat myself up.  I’m remembering the other Valentines Days.  The one where we left the “fancy” restaurant because it was a Prix Fixe menu with nothing that I would eat (sweet meats…gross) in our nice clothes and went to Benny’s (hole-in-the-wall Mexican Food) because they had chicken tacos on their menu that I knew I would love.  The one where we made crab legs and ate it in the living room at his old apartment, with newspaper for a tablecloth.  And then there’s the one where I agreed to be his wife.  Really, three out of four aint bad.