(Talk Talk Talk, Explain Explain Explain)

I’ve been having a hard time communicating.

Not just with the people around me but also with myself.

Over the last 3+ years blogging was the way I mainly communicated my thoughts and feelings to the world around me. It was (is) also the way I communicate with myself. For me it can take hours from the first word typed to hitting the “publish” button because as the words fly off my hands I’m digesting them. I’m thinking about them. I’m crying for them. I’m allowing the emotional Tara the freedom to feel, and maybe the most important thing: To let go.

I’ve not been allowing myself that freedom to feel. In part because some of those emotional “need to release” still stem from the accident two years ago that while it didn’t affect me physically because I didn’t come in contact with a truck in a crosswalk, it has seem to affected me much more emotionally than first realized (or probably more accurate never realized).

It was different blogging about my weight loss and subsequent life changes because most people reading the type type type of my words didn’t know Mitch. My thoughts and feelings had a safe haven because he couldn’t give two cents to social media and hardly a blink to the birth of 253andcounting and the graduation to ALifeChangingJourney. I could safely put my words out there for me to step back and ponder. Almost like walking into a vast open space and leaving behind something that I knew I could never find again so take a deep breath Tara and let it go because it’s gone now.

My life with Mimi is so intertwined with social media that when I take my dirty laundry and present it to the proverbial clothesline that is this blog, not only am I hanging out my underwear for the world (albeit population: not that big) to see/read but I’m hanging out a second pair of undies that regardless of how “clean” I try to show them to be, they’re just as dirty because now my shit(stain) is not just mine but ours.

I think about whether what I’m going to say is hurtful or be taken wrong.  I think about what others are going to think about this relationship (“Well they *hardly* knew each other before running off and getting married”, or “That’s what happens when you leave one marriage for another”) and how much that one very significant day in November 2011 impacted my life without being the one actually impacted in the crosswalk.

Yesterday found us sitting in an office.

A marriage counselor.

It hurts to say, but I am reminded by Mimi that we walked through that door because we WANTED to not because we NEEDED too. Still truth be told I feel like somewhat of a failure that I couldn’t keep the communication wheel spinning. That slowly I’ve drawn inward and over time kept the world blog at arm’s length because I didn’t want to work through something that I know is being read by the very person that looks me in the eyes and says “I love you”.

But the gears of Tara’s brain are grinding together and it’s difficult to process “stuff” when not only are you trying to force something to work that clearly isn’t but you aren’t using the tools that keep things running smoothly. It’s like trying to unscrew something with a piece of wet paper and the screwdriver is within arms reach.

I.KNOW.I.CAN.DO.IT.WITH.THIS.PIECE.OF.WET.PAPER.DAMMIT!!!!

(No…)

(No you can’t)

So the counselor…

Funny part about sitting with someone that doesn’t know me as an individual or us as a couple, I forget how much there is to tell before you even get to the moment at hand.

“We’re here because we’re having a hard time communicating”

(talk talk talk, explain explain explain)

“You see, there was this accident”

(talk talk talk, explain explain explain)

“But in order to understand the impact of the accident, we need to explain how we met and our relationship”

(talk talk talk, explain explain explain)

“But in order to understand our relationship, we need to explain about our weight loss”

(talk talk talk, explain explain explain)

“Oh and just to make things interesting, I’m also on the trans spectrum and for shits and giggles the spectrum for Aspergers”

How you  like them apples counselor?

We spent the initial two hours letting her get to know us and our story and hitting on some key trigger spots (road bumps) in what brought us to be sitting next to each other and directly across from her. It wasn’t easy but it’s a start to getting that communication wheel back up and running.

Mimi said some things I wasn’t expecting and along with some of my own gear grinding assumptions about my running/training/blogging/(insert random assumption about whatever here) my eyes see a little clearer, my heart feels a little lighter and instead of drawing inwards towards myself, I’m going to allow myself to gnaw on the notion that maybe it’s time I start blogging a little more…

Even if it means you have to see two pairs of undies instead of just one.