04/07/2023: Getaway Day 2 (Margherita)

We finally made it back here. I started my writing journey in this journal last year, the first time I was here. Looking back on the feelings I had when I was here before, I think that in some ways, somehow I’ve grown in a short period of time. I came to terms with a lot of things that were causing emotional turmoil. Bridges have been repaired and problems have been sorted out. Of course new problems have arisen and new bridges have been burned, but that’s just the strange cycle that is growth and change.

I have begun to accept things that have allowed me to move forward and become stronger. Every day is a new opportunity to learn and grow, to understand what I can live without, and things I could stand to have a little more of in my life. Coming here always makes me contemplative about my place on Earth, what grounds me. I look around me and I am grateful. 

I don’t hold any bitterness in my heart. My thoughts are clear. Nature always provides me with this clarity. It heightens the good thoughts and feelings I have inside. It never fails to bring out the best in me, and the potential for me to improve. Every time we come here, I witness the things that make us who we are, and I’m reminded of all the reasons I love myself, how much I love Caleb, how much I love us and the path we’re on.

We’re able to talk for hours about things we would never think to talk about in the midst of our daily routines. We can be candid, funny and sincere. We can get to the root of things, our curiosities, our challenges, our dreams. It’s truly one of life’s rarest things to find someone who thinks and feels like you do. No matter what happens around me and no matter how my relationships with friends and family change, I know he’s my constant; he knows me better than anyone. He believes in me. He understands that if he is patient, I will meet him where he is emotionally, mentally and physically.

It’s overwhelming in the best way to have someone who knows you can and will succeed. He nurtures me, and I him, and somehow after all these years we continue to grow ever closer, even when I think that isn’t possible anymore. There are countless things to still learn about each other, to improve upon. 

When it comes to any aspect of my life, I am forever a student and I am forever grateful. I also know I can’t pour from an empty cup. I will continue to go to him to learn and to grow, to nurture the pure love that we share. I am grounded in him, as well as in nature, my anchors in this ever ebbing and flowing life.