Only Oceans Between Us

I let him go, again and again.  And he comes back to me.   It’s the only way we work, my sailor husband and I.

How do we have a normal relationship?  Spending months apart as he roams the world from one side to the other, pole to pole, port to port?  The answer is simple.  We don’t have a normal relationship.  Nothing about us is typical.  It never has been.

We’ve been an us from the start.  Our first date spanned an entire day and two cities.  Our first and only break up lasted a grand total of thirty minutes before he threw me over his shoulder and ran through the rain, washing the worry from my mind, kissing the doubt from my lips.

We trust without question.  We love without boundary or border or walls.  That is how we work.  Our marriage is one part feeling and a large part choice.  You choose to commit, choose to see past the flaws, fight through the pitfalls.

We tried typical once and it nearly killed us.  He worked a day job, home every night, wordlessly slipping away until I realized I’d lost him entirely.  He wasn’t the man I loved anymore.  He’d done the thing I’d never dared to ask but knew I’d always wanted.  I’d done the thing I’d never thought possible, changed who he was, changed us.

So . . . I let him go.  And now he comes back to me, again and again.  That is how we work, my sailor husband and I.  He’s the father of my children, the love of my life.  He’s often gone but he is always, always present.

It’s not for everyone, this life.  We know that.  It’s not easy.  It’s not perfect.  But it’s ours.  And we love having only oceans between us.