life is good to say anything less would be a cruel understatement...
But Everything in life is about Balance.
The Learning Curve
We have all seen those silly memes about finding the person you can be your most authentic self with, the person you can be your weird, annoying, ugly crying, overly sensitive self with that will still take your hand and tell you that you’re beautiful and that no matter what they will be right there with you through every second of chaos you face.. I always kind of thought those memes were BS. I was single for a very long time before I met Nick and I had no interest in going on another boring date, with another guy that was talking about the exact same things as the same boring guy before him and likely the one that would come after that guy. (no offense fell’s I was in a pretty miserable spot) We worked together. He was "technically speaking” my boss but I will argue that we were very much on the same level :) and I will die on that ledge… Oh, and let me preface this by saying: Nick, is not that guy in that meme..
Nick is the guy that will see me when I’m really sad and dance me around the living room and keep trying until he has me giggling away with a little less tightness in my chest. Nick is the guy that is just there without being asked when things get really hard, AND, Nick is that will turn my dreams into his dreams, and his dreams into mine, and never stop chasing them with me. Nick is the guy that helped me to dream again at all.
Working together allowed us to get to know each other on a different wavelength. Don’t get me wrong, I always thought he was cute, even way back when he was my bar manager and I was a measly little bar tender!! That was a different lifetime for both of us, he was simply that at the time, my kinda cute bar manager. Fast forward a few years and he comes back as the general manager of the restaurant that I was (due to lack of ALL better options) was the number two manager, without the pay, and with responsibilities well beyond my current position.
Believe it or not, Nick and I’s relationship started out very platonically. Listening to music or just venting about work, life, and just having a good time. Things slowly turned away from friendship but even that was a confusing, at least for me, time in our relationship, Nick isn't much of a talker about things.. he had to accept early on that I would tolerate that for a little while, but at some point, I will force him to sit down and talk to me so it doesn’t add unneeded tension in our lives. It took me a long time to communicate correctly and I don’t trust people very easily, I spent a lot of time assuming that he would get bored with me, or annoyed by my illness that made me less than fun the majority of the time, but he didn’t. He just kept finding ways to make me smile and over time he wore me down and won me over.
While we did work together we would find ways that we could get out of town, usually we would take a night or 2 and come back home to Iowa, rent a room at the Drury Suites in West Glenn and just have a weekend that we could “date” like normal people without the fear of one of, or both of us getting fired.. Our families didn’t even know about us for a very long time and when they did find out, we were ratted out by other people. I met Nicks parents, 2 of his brothers, and one of his sister-in-laws after one of his brothers told his parents about me and I got a text message simply stating “you have cordially been invited to dinner. Yep, I was lucky enough to get half the family on day 1. Everyone was very welcoming, and his father even gave me the pleasure of experiencing what I’m guessing, a lot of men have been through with the father of their current wives and girlfriends. It was a new experience for me, but also kind of awesome. I knew we were going to get along very well, so I let him grill me with all of his (sometimes rather unique) questions and I answered all of them without skipping a beat and spending a lot of time giggling. I felt like a part of their family about 15 minutes after arriving. So, since Nick decided to throw me into that one without ANY warning, a few days later, I told him we were going to Iowa for the weekend (we lived in Omaha at this time) and we were going to my family’s home in Lacona. I didn’t give him much of a choice. Aside from my father NOT grilling him about every aspect of his life, it went about the same, I knew about an hour or so into our visit that Nick was apart of the family. Both of my parents adore him and I think no matter which side of the family we are spending time with at any given time, we both know we’re home. I didn’t have any form of faith that this kind of relationship could exist. Nick has shown me how wrong I have been so many times. He has proven every thought I had from my past crappy relationships (I called off a wedding about 6 weeks before the wedding date almost 10 years ago and basically decided that day, that all men were evil) We both have our faults, many, many faults, but I love his because they are his and he loves mine because they’re mine. We have very similar views on a lot, and the things we disagree on, we disagree hugely on! I love him for that too. There is no one I trust more, feel safer with, or just like to be around more than NIck. So, when we started talking about actually making Leafy Dreams happen, although we are not married and I had been on a medical leave of absence for 6 months or so at the time and didn’t have the cash flow to put into it for me to be comfortable starting a business with my boyfriend… because it was Nick, I didn’t hesitate. I would walk to the end of the world with this man, and I have never questioned whether or not he would do the same for me.
Those silly little memes we talked about earlier, Nick is the person that showed me that that was possible. My parents have been married for 40 some years, and after my ex fiance and I knew I would never even consider marriage or seriously dating again unless it was someone that I could have that kind of relationship with, I could care less if we get married or not ( NOT SAYING I DON’T WANT TO….) but I know in my heart of hearts that he is my person and he is always going to be my person.
So why am I giving you all of this insight into our personal lives?
Balance. The amount of conflict Nick and I faced while working together was astounding. We would get into rather loud disagreements and even then, I was never shy about speaking up when something just didn’t feel right or I knew that we had made the wrong call.
We are able to enjoy so many of our days locked inside our garden, being with the plants, growing together, laughing and just enjoying our time while we work, that it almost seems shameful that we aren’t able to go through all of our worst days without fighting, but, we are also human, and I am yet to meet another human without at least a couple mishaps somewhere in their backstory.
All of that, at being said, The last couple weeks have been yet another new normal for us. Nick started his “Summer Job” Inspecting and quoting roof replacements, and I have taken almost all of the farm responsibilities on on the days that he is out saving the world fixing one families leaky roof at a time, but it hasn’t been the easiest transition for either of us. Finding the balance of responsibilities at home, both working pretty non-stop.. there are days that we fight about who should be doing the dishes, or laundry, or because one of us said something in a teasing manner and the other wasn’t at all amused. These are the times we fight. When our stressors don’t align. There are some things that I just don’t typically stress over, after over 10 years of a illness that just kept getting worse, a couple heart conditions secondary to my ever failing kidneys and then a problematic kidney transplant for the first 2.5 years after the surgery, I have a pretty skewed view on things that should overly stress me out. Nick worries about money, being able to provide for us, the day to day status of my health, along with everything else life throws at us now and then. We put everything we had and then some into starting Leafy Dreams just 7 months ago. I stress when he is stressed. To me, as long as we remember that it’s us against the world and never us against each other… there is nothing we can’t do and no problem we can’t solve. Life should never be taken for granted and spending every day stressing about the stressors that will always be there, although very relevant for everyone, doesn't DO anything to solve anything and it certainly has a way of complicating very uncomplicated things, like loving the people you love. I would spend my life in a tent moving place to place if I had to if it meant I got to spend my life with Nick. With him and with Leafy, I don’t need anything else. What more could anyone ask for aside from a partner who loves them correctly, shares their dreams, and will do whatever it takes to make sure the two of you can chase that dream?
If I am the one answering, nothing, Nick and I will always find a way to keep each other safe and do everything in our power to keep each other laughing, There are days that I pull all nighters because he is just too tired to keep working, and he knows that the following day or 2, I am going to need to sleep, eat, and frankly, be babied a little bit. There are days that I still wake up with absolutely no energy and feel awful because I have been pulling too many hours or putting too much strain on my body and he will pick up the slack so I can rest and get my energy up. Life is about balance, love is about balance, pretty much everything can find a resolution in balance.