So I was driving the other day with someone I love very much and we could see the sun bidding its adieu for the day. I said, “we will get to see the sunset when we hit the coast." He said, “no we are going to miss it.” We often disagree about things like this. Events and their timing. Each of usually being right in our own way.
So when we hit the coast, the evening sky was awash in blue and pink, cotton candy clouds streaked the sky. I said, “see we didn’t miss it!” To which he replied, “we totally missed it, the sun is already long gone!” And as usual we were both right...and wrong.
Who was correct, really depended on how you defined sunset. To him, sunset is the time when the sun hangs low in the sky and then finally disappears below the horizon. To me, sunset is a much longer process and is not so technically driven.
So as we drove and playfully argued about this detail, he told me that what I was seeing now was really just an afterglow, but not a literal sunset. Then he said, “this is really a sunsat.” And we laughed our asses off. So from now until the end of time, it shall be a sunsat to me.
In our hilarity, I said, ok so after the sun is up, do we now call a sunrise a sunrised? He said sunrose...and then proceeded to tell me that rised wasn’t a word. I said I make up words all the time, so sunrised worked just fine.
I said, “sunrisen?” We laughed some more.
I am not sure if you have someone in your life that can make something like this hilarious and fun, but I highly recommend. To everyone else, this was a stupid conversation that really minced words. To us, it is just what we do. Have playful arguments over the nuances of life. Creating new words and now a new way to think from our previously divergent ideas and definitions.
And this is one of the many reasons I love this person. He makes me think. And I love his mind. So sharp and fast. I marvel at the quickness of wit and intellect. This verbal sparring has always been an essential ingredient for me in friendship and in love relationships. I need the witty repartee as much as I need the attraction and the love. This intellectual stimulation is so rare in people, not because they are not smart, but because there is just an intellectual chemistry that I believe happens (or not) just like sexual and physical chemistry.
It is also interesting to note that the sun has risen and set on this particular relationship, several times. But it remains, never really being sure if the ups and downs are like the setting sun or the rising dawn. Are they just cycles of loving and living that are natural to this whole living of life thing? Or are they just ups and downs associated with many of the ingredients of love gone south? Truly I do not know.
So I find myself in a place where definitive answers evade me. I am not sure if we shall rise again, but I am equally not sure that the sunsat on us either. For now, I live in the quiet of the afterglow, trusting that whatever lessons we need to teach the other shall be done with grace, dignity and an ever expanding heart that is filled with love and interest.
Someone said to me the other day that I was too fucked up for a normal healthy person, but had my shit way too together to be a lost cause. And I felt that. I need some grit and some redemption. And I need to own that I need this intellectual curiosity, this intimate familiar that is off beat and sometimes down right weird. I need someone in my life that can have these absolutely inane conversation about the technical manifestation of a sun rising or setting, with new verbiage being the result.
And in so many ways, this silly conversation about sunrised and sunsat is emblematic of our story...there has been a lot of both. A lot of dawning new beginnings and a lot of sad departures. And somehow now, they all seem to make sense to me. They were not mistakes or missteps along the way, they were the ups and downs needed to teach me to love better. Myself and others. And him. It is easy to love when nothing is required. It is much harder to love when you both have traumatic histories that have tentacles that warp and wrap you and all you touch.
And what I have come to know is that we cannot ever be sure whether the sunsat will be the last one we share. And that a sunrised is never promised for all of us. Sometimes we just get the one and that is all. And then we spend the rest of our days searching for a person with whom to share this experience again. What I have learned is that while there are many people in this life with which to watch the sun do its thing...there are not many who can fundamentally change the entire experience for you. Those people are rare...and loving them while they love you through all the varied intimacies and frailties in this life bring about a fundamental change in your existence. And the parts that don’t destroy you, heal you in some weird, crazy way. And you are never the same...and that is ultimately for the best.
And forever in your life sunset and sunrise have a time period, and an afterglow which has a name that no one else alive understands but the two of you.
And like all things in nature, there is a balance...he coined sunsat and I coined sunrised...he finally giving way that sunrised was better than sunrose. But now I am not so sure...sunrose is kind of beautiful...and so the story goes on.