The anatomy of a fight

I love this idea that's been going around, introduced to me by another blogger:

"Mon Trésor: That's french for My Treasure. This is a new, old idea. An idea borrowed from a couple of other bloggers I read. They write letters to their future... whatevers... girlfriend/boyfriend, husband/wife, partner. I decided I'd like to do this as well. Kind of weird writing to a nobody, writing to an unknown future, but I figured it would be good to look to the future instead of the past." - Lilly, Path of Lilly's

To my beloved,

Sometimes we will fight. It will fill us both with despair as we no doubt relive painful unravelings of past relationships: no one gets to this age without a history. We won't know how to disagree and feel good about it. Indeed, each of us will feel like we are giving our all and, as is inevitable in a misunderstanding, getting little back. That is the price of scars; having carved neuropeptide canyons into our brains and granting familiarity to frustration, we are eager to avoid that which hurt before.

You will feel lost with my cloying sensitivity and I will be stung by your chill. We will both withdraw into impenetrable shells and I will try to remember what I learned about how to argue but I will forget.

We'll step back across a widening chasm, fold our arms protectively over our hearts and avert our eyes. I will cry. Maybe you will too. We will both decide this is it; "it" for the relationship or "it" for the escalation is unclear, but a cap will be placed nonetheless, choking off the toxic fumes growing in this fiery brew.

Sometimes the best way to put out a fire is to starve it.

We will stop talking then.

Both of us will steep; marinating in the pungent wine of feeling misunderstood.

Then we will take a step onto the path of distraction.

I will forget this then, but it will be the first step to disengaging the ancient, reptilian part of the brain which knows only to fight or flee.

I will grab a book and crack a tiny smile.

You will study. It was an escape then and it is an escape now. Electron transport chains are so predictable; systems function so logically. They make sense, unlike the tempestuous recipes peppered in the cauldron of the heart. There is comfort in knowing and you will drink from fountains of words.

At some point, maybe after sleep, maybe not, we will attempt to look again at the splinter buried in the psyche. It is red and pulsating and tender to the touch. We can't pull it out yet -- it's too deep and thus inaccessible. But we gently worry at it, palpating it softly, privately, yearning for relief.

After some time, we will exchange some awkward, tentative texts.

We decide that the our own egos are less worthy of salvation than each other's.

If we both think this, we will be okay.

You will send me a smiley face.

And I will smile.