Love is a Battlefield

I am a little bit behind in my blogging so what I'm going to recount right now actually happened last weekend. Much like the bedwetting incident, I also had to take a few days to come to grips with it before I could write about it. 


Tim and I had a very tricky reconciliation after my trip to Cannes. As you probably sensed from "Festival de Fight", things were a little tense while I was gone. They became tenser when I got home and without going into too much detail, we found ourselves in a dark place and decided that we needed to take a little break from civilization and go find one another again. Alone. In the wilderness. And much like Christopher McCandless, we too learned that sometimes going into the wilderness evokes more devastation than joy and that it provides more questions than answers. And questions that are too big for the little human mind to take on.


So how did it all transpire? Well. We decided to drive down to the farm Friday after work. Our car ride was a tiny step up from what I would consider Utter Hell so when we finally arrived at the Loehmann's in some random Mallville, New Jersey town, we were both dazed and confused. We wandered around the store picking out towels and blankets and pillows and flashlights in silence. Next, we hit the grocery store where I followed Tim around aimlessly like a little puppy as he found some food that I didn't even register but nodded my head agreeably as though I liked it. 

When we finally arrived at the farm in silence, it was already dark and I must admit, quite creepy. (reminder: NO ELECTRICITY). We got out a big flashlight and built a fire and put up a tent. As I was jetlagged and still on France time, I was a zombie going through the motions. It felt like 3am. Then we sat down by the fire where I propped up my throbbing sprained ankle (Zelda knocked me down in the park that morning) and we stared into the fire listlessly. Every time I started to doze off involuntarily, Tim would wake me up with nonsensical chitchat. At one point, I started crying and said, why can't I just go to sleep? Why won't you let me sleep? To which he took great offense and said "I thought this would be a wonderful romantic night". I was like, I can see where you're coming from- SORT OF- except that my foot hurts, I'm tired as shit, it's freezing cold, and we are on a concrete slab. I finally got up enough strength to escape the sleep deprivation torture and went into the tent to lie down on my concrete slab. It was very uncomfortable and the dog kept jumping on me from outside but I didn't care. I finally convinced Tim to lie down with me and we huddled together, shivering all night long.


After dozing in and out of consciousness for hours, the torturous night started to break and the first rays of dawn brought us hope anew. Tim got out of the tent first and left me there for a few more minutes of rest. When I emerged shortly thereafter, he was sitting on a lawn chair by the fire pit made of cinder blocks, cooking his beef shish kebob from the night before. I sat down in the lawn chair next to his and put my kebob on the fire next to his. We silently ate our steak and veggies and watched the sun rise as dawn spread across the field and with it, the ghosts from the night before took form in the shape of mist. It was beautiful. It was heartbreaking. It was like napalm in the morning. I seriously felt like we were in Saving Private Ryan the morning after the opening battle scene, surrounded by mayhem and choking on silence. As we chewed on our morning beef, we eventually held hands, kissed, and let go of our demons. The sun finally lifted and brought about a new day. We took down the tent, put out the fire and put on our work gloves, armed for construction.