She looked out the window listlessly. The trees were dancing wildly with the strong winds today. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply. Exhale. She watched the trees dance as she thought deeply about her current mental state. She felt tired again, but not as exhausted as she was previously. She did have a burst of energy last week due to the excitement of her birthday, but now that it has passed, she felt tired again. The downside to feeling calm was the lack of excitement. “Will I ever be energetic again?” She thought and sighed. She shivered as she watched how strongly the winds blew even though the windows in her small apartment were all closed. She had been lacking in her household chores lately. She was supposed to do laundry today but the winds were giving her an excuse not to. The laundry room in her apartment complex was on the opposite side from her apartment and the thought of walking through the heavy winds made her shiver down to her bones.

She thinks that the status of her relationship was the source of her debilitation, but she didn’t exactly feel any stress towards it. She pondered about it frequently about the direction it was going, but she didn’t quite feel stressed or anxious about it. A new feeling. Or perhaps she gave up fighting for it any longer. She felt she did everything humanly possible that one could to support another human and there was nothing else she could do. This gave her peace about it. Normally with every hardship in a relationship, there’s always something both parties could improve on. But in this situation, she tried everything and it still didn’t work. Perhaps they just weren’t meant to be as she previously thought. She found solitude in the fact that she worked so hard for this relationship, harder than she had ever tried before. She was proud of herself for how far she had come from her previous relationships. She had matured into what a healthy partner should be. No more deflecting, suspicion, manipulation, cheating, lying, yelling. She finally learned how to have calm, serious conversations without arguing. She learned how to approach difficult topics gently. Albeit, most of her approaches began with her attempting to describe how she felt hurt and then bursting into tears. She was an ugly crier and she always cried. She learned how to forgive. She learned how to say, “I felt hurt because…” instead of “You hurt me.” She learned that not everything coming from a partner was a personal attack. She learned that a relationship is more than just two people who love each other, a relationship is meshing two individual lives as one while attempting to hold their own individuality – an incredibly difficult challenge. She learned you can’t change another person, especially if they don’t want to. She learned that you can’t help another person, especially if they don’t want it or see a problem within themselves. And she accepted all of this. She learned you can’t “fix” people but you can support them while they go their process of self-reflection and improvement. But she felt a little lost on how to proceed when there’s a rut of denial in existence. “How do you continue when they don’t recognize a problem?” She whispered gently to her small Tuxedo cat next to her. The cat looked up at her but then turned his head and continued to rest gently next to her. The best she could do was be there. The best she could do for herself is leave to stop getting caught in the crossfire of deflection. Although, her newfound inner peace and clarity helped ground her in these difficult times so that she didn’t get hurt by other people.

There was nothing else she could do. She continued to watch the trees sway and wave with the wind while petting her cat in her lap. Sunday morning.