Drawing a horse towards water

Marriage will draw you to the mirror. Turn on the sink and drink.

I’m anxious today, because my wife and I have made a decision to choose health over what feels good.

It started with our eating habits and has gone on to the time we spend together, really investing in quality time.

I pictured being in the perfect television marriage growing up. I had no sense of the bear that marriage can be and sometimes is—the days when they say never go to bed angry but we do, the moments when my insecurities bubble up and take an innocuous statement and turn it into an offense that makes me wonder, “Who is this guy?”

Something that’s not me and I often linger fixed in the mirror wondering, “Who did she marry?”

In marriage my flaws poke out, exposed like cuff-links revealed in a gesture.

And it makes me consider what is it, what does it mean to be better, to do better?

I’ve found marriage and life is a dance. This is the dance that we are all led to learn and as for me and my wife we both desire to dance it well. The “I’m-sorry-slide” is the hardest for me, as well as the “I-was-wrong-shuffle” seems desperately tedious to master.

God saw fit to put me with a fixer, a confronter. I’m an ostrich loving to bury my head in the sand when the conflict tide rises. I’ll choke on the words that are needed to be said more than I’ll let go of them, not because of weakness, which is the lie that I want to believe, but because there’s a certain pain that I’m used to, a satisfaction I’ve received from biting the bullet, from being able to say, “I’ve turned the other cheek.” It’s a badge of honor. But it’s an oppressive state for the Chandler that wants to be known, that wants to laugh but can’t because his mouth’s filled with sand.

The key thing for me is to recognize the origin of my struggle, the roots that infiltrate the fallow soil.

The accuser continues saying, “I’ll never be good enough to do the things that I want to do so I must be good at suffering, at taking it, at taking the cuts, the nicks and scrapes,” for fear that one day I’ll be like my father, for fear that I’ll blow up, that I’ll become the one who makes those around me walk on egg shells.

It took me a long time to realize that my father was probably taking it, too. He was probably holding it in because he had to as one of the youngest, growing up in a house of nine. And it’s there where he became an island.

And now this threat of the invisible man glares menacingly at another generation.

So how do my father’s issues, my marriage, and dancing all spin in this web of words I’ve written? I’m trying to remember… I’m trying to write that one word that will set me free from the bondage that restrains me in those places: father, marriage, love… find life.

For “the power of life and death is in the tongue,” or the pen or keyboard. And I’ve chosen life. So, I’m exposing myself to you to say that I have something to hide but won’t hide it. Maybe you’ll get it, but of course it’s not really for you.

This is self-surgery, core work, like my wife does on her patients, to dig up what can’t grow. Always, “to thine own self be true.” Don’t just go to the water. Drink from it, quench the thirst.

Chandler Collins is a staff writer for The Southeast Sun and Daleville Sun-Courier. The opinions of this writer are his own and not the opinion of the paper. He can be reached at (334) 393-2969 or by email at [email protected].