Posted on by Trevor Elms · 2 Comments

Ride.

Megan is an Extrovert — with introverted tendencies. I am an introvert, which I have written about a few times. This means that we’ve literally had to work with our marriage counselor about talking, and how much of it I can handle.

How to properly express myself when there has been too much talking and I need to take a break from it. Likewise, for Megan to see this as not being a slight against her and to be able to respond calmly with understanding in kind.

True communication. Recognizing, at base, who each other are as people so that the small things that pile up on a day by day basis do not tear us apart from the foundations. True love in that fashion as well. We love each other with such depth that we want to continually work to communicate better, and reduce the daily friction that occurs between people.

One of the ways we do this is by experiencing things together in which we are not allowed, or cannot easily talk.

Something that we can then have an entire conversation about afterwards that I am not only engaged in, but am incredibly excited to jabber in detail. Movies either at home or in the theater, musicals, plays, and I’ve even dragged myself to some ballet with Megan as it was Swan Lake, after all.

We do plenty of experiences with talking as well, usually to a bar or a sporting event. I really like to listen to people talk in public. Some people call it eavesdropping, I call it observation. So when Megan and I are in a place where I feel like people could and would be doing the same to me, I don’t like to talk very much. I’m a fairly private person in public. Loud spaces make me more me — I’m willing to speak my mind more freely when the evidence in front of me tells me I am much harder to be heard.

Funny to write about being a private person in public, considering all this private information I am writing about myself for the world to see. Though, when it comes to representing myself in writing, I’ve pretty much been free with myself online since before my teens. Also at least, when it comes to who I am as a person — I don’t mind people being able to read it. My thoughts can be edited here — I’m bad at editing my spoken word at times.

Back to experiences, though. Ones where Megan and I don’t get to talk much. I’m going to write a sentence now that I think some people have a hard time understanding — or it will offend them.

Every time I get on my motorcycle I am comfortable with the idea that it may be my last time.

Megan and I haven’t spoken about it yet, though I am sure we will before this is posted in the morning. I am fairly positive she is comfortable with this now, too — and I never begrudge anyone who isn’t. You have to be to get on one of the things. If you don’t think about that decision before getting on one, you should.

Recently Megan and I truly started riding together. I have owned my motorcycle for four years and crashed it twice. Once my fault, the other not. It’s been two years since my last accident. I learn more through my accidents than anything else, and I learned a lot from those.

Don’t think I am a newbie, either. I grew up riding dirt bikes with my friend Jake in his back yard. Took the motorcycle class, got my endorsement, and then rode a moped for a significant amount of miles in Hawai’i before I got wasted and it got stolen.

Riding a motorcycle is like the rest of life, you can be cautious, but it is just as unpredictable.

So to have Megan finally comfortable, so comfortable and trusting she closes her eyes on rides, means the world to me. We do not ride dangerously, we ride extremely defensively and can count out by number when we get home how many accidents we avoided — as well as where we could have died had we not been aware.

We go on these rides together, sharing an experience that no one else will ever get. We see the breathtaking Colorado landscape and sunset — carving in the curves along it.

Knowing full well that if this is our last, it’s our last together.

That is one of the very best things about riding my motorcycle with Megan. It is an experience we share together where at any moment, we could both perish. I know that sounds terrifying to people — but I have have found that being scared of death itself is a great way to not actually live. It’s a great way to hold yourself back from things you want.

When Megan and I get on that motorcycle together, we are comfortable with the idea of Death taking us under its cloak and never letting go. We’re not asking for it, we don’t want it. We sure as hell don’t spend the entire ride worrying about it, though.

No, it’s that slight level of fear that is needed to ride and stay safe. The one that can be acknowledged but conquered. With warm air flowing all around, and a rumbling engine beneath. It’s that feeling of taking back some of the choices life makes for us, and making a choice for ourselves. Doing and experiencing what we want, because it makes our daily life more enjoyable and brings us closer together as people and as a couple.

Riding is one of the many things Megan and I do as opposites so that we can communicate better and enjoy each others’ company better. It’s quickly become one of our very favorite things to do now that Megan is so much more comfortable than she used to be.

Now we can go through this year’s catalogue to pick out a better seat and louder pipes for the highway — because the thing is completely paid off! I wrote about catharsis and football, how there are things that give me great release. I just feel better about life after a ride. Not even football compares to how happy and complete I feel as a person — when Megan is on the back of my motorcycle and we are riding through beautiful scenery.

I’m really happy that as the years go on we are still finding new ways to properly enjoy and appreciate each others’ company. I look forward to seeing what rides we map out next in life.

Thank you for reading.

©2017 Trevor Elms
Featured photo by Trevor Elms, Megan Elms Pictured. ©2017

 

Posted on by Trevor Elms · 9 Comments

Kids.

I was feeling a little worn out again today. I thought, let’s take a break — it’s been over a week of me consistently putting out a good 1000 words. Legitimately the most consistent amount of writing I have been able to accomplish in my life. But it’s also not the first time I have been able to write approximately this many words in this amount of time.

I decided to go into my drafts and saw this picture. One of my very favorites.

My wife and I cannot have children in the traditional fashion.

I will not be going into the reasons why because those do not matter. What I am going to do today is write about what that loss means to me.

You see, I have never known what I have wanted to be when I grow up — except for a father. Since as early as five years old I can remember looking up to my Dad, wanting to be just like him, and wanting to raise a family.

My Dad has given me memories like lifting me above his head, just by his thumb.

I am also a very scientifically driven person when it comes to my intellectual beliefs about this existence and this lifetime. So I have spent my whole life wanting to continue the genes of my family and continue our line.

I was always either consciously or sub-consciously growing up looking for the person that I wanted to spend the rest of my life, and pro-create with. When I finally met Megan I knew I’d found her. Megan and I had a long journey together before even being official, but I knew from early on that I wanted my kids to be drenched in everything about her personality — and her physical traits as a human being.

So to find out that our child in no way will be 100% the both of us, no matter the path we choose — is the worst heartbreak I have ever felt in my life.

Sure, there is a chance for a miracle — with an almost scientific certainty it won’t because that number has so many zeros in front of it I could hit my word quota just by typing it out. This was the one thing I always knew I wanted. Through all my troubles and my confusion. It was constant — even when I thought I was Jesus Christ who had lived for 1000 years in some poor tenants house, I knew I wasn’t a father yet and wanted to be.

I now know I am completely capable of love no matter where the child comes from.

The picture featured in this post is part of the proof for me. I have been around my nephews and nieces for long enough now for me to consider them mine. I care about who they grow to become and care about being the best example I can be for them.

I would do anything, and everything for them to keep them safe and happy. And I know that I can do this for whatever child comes our way in the future too.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t still hurt.

One of the first things my psychologist told me when I first met him is that I deal terribly with loss. Insofar being that when I met him… I really didn’t deal with it at all. I thought I did, but much like a lot of things I was doing with emotions at the time I was just letting them be and putting them somewhere where they couldn’t “affect” me.

This is still a loss that I am having difficulty with, and it is why I am happy that Megan and I are taking until 2020 before we decide what to do moving forward. I’d rather now spend this time appreciating time with her, and the time and money that we have, without a child — since we cannot so easily have one right now.

I am a strong believer that everything happens for a reason.

Not that the reason comes from some divine force or third party with a plan, I believe that we find reason within the things that happen to us so that we can grow and push forward as people.

There’s a large part of me thinking in this moment that had Megan and I been able to have a child that I would not have started this website — and would not be accomplishing a dream of mine. I would be too busy being a dad, dedicating myself to a child and already working my fairly time and attention consuming career.

Many times in my life now I have been hit with something that isn’t fun. Every time I have picked myself back up from it and gotten stronger because of it. There’s a really cliché saying in there about what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger; what I have begun to learn is that these clichés exist for a reason.

When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.

Megan and I have been making a lot of really good lemonade lately. Like the best kind. We have all sorts of travel plans for this year, tattoos, expensive dinners, buying cool things on a whim.

We’re just enjoying the things we have now — and not the things that we can’t have at this moment. We’re enjoying each other, and what we bring forth from one another. At this point, I’m not sure I’d even have it any other way. We can take this time to be as selfish as we absolutely want to. So when it comes time to do the most selfless thing any one can do,

We will be ready.

I think the larger meaning in this piece is that finding a purpose, and a meaning within the things that happen to us is in my experience what helps us grow more and become stronger as people.

I do not know how our child will come to us, but I do know that child will have more love than they know what to do with. That is a pretty cool thing to think about.

Thank you for reading.

©2017 Trevor Elms.
Pictured from left to right: Trevor Elms, Lucas Miller, Derrick Miller
Featured photo taken by Megan Elms ©2014
Posted on by Trevor Elms · 9 Comments

Choice.

I love you,

I like you,

I choose you.

These are words my wife and I say to each other regularly. Sometimes we don’t like each other, and we will tell each other. We always love each other.

We have not always wanted to choose each other, however. Yet we continually choose each other over and over again after we make mistakes, or otherwise. This is the definition of marriage. A lifetime dedication to growing with one another. People do not stay the same, you must accept and support each other for who they are and whom they grow to be if you want the relationship to succeed.

This is going to be about choice and the story of me falling in love with another woman while I was just a few months away from getting married.

This story does not go anywhere sexual, at least not physical in any way. Though I could tell, and I’m sure she could as well, that the tension needed to be cut with a chainsaw. The woman whom I speak about in this piece will not be mentioned by name, though we are in touch and I am fairly positive she will read it one way or another.

We have never overtly spoken about these feelings that I believe were always mutual.

She is a woman that when I met her — made me feel emotions that I hadn’t at times even felt around Megan. She has a smile just as bright and captivating as Megan’s and she is an extremely intelligent and driven person.

This woman challenged me mentally and meshed with me intellectually maybe more than I think anyone else ever has. I would be lying in bed next to my fiancé thinking about her and how I would get to see her when I went to work in the morning. I would think about how I would get to spend all day just talking nonsense and laughing.

We held our gazes too long, too many times — often with laughter. It was incredibly fulfilling and uplifting.

Some of my favorite days working in my life were in tandem with her. She understood me very well as a person and was able to get the most out of me while we were working together. She inspired me, to say the least. I very easily fall in love with people when they inspire me. I love to be creative but I find it hard to just bring it out from within. I need some one, or some thing to pull it out of me.

This woman pulled a lot more out of me than I could have imagined any one but Megan could, and I didn’t know what to do with myself.

Even on my wedding day I was slightly concerned out about it. These are feelings I was having that I hadn’t even gotten to experience yet. Was I sure that I wanted to link my life to another when I was also in love with someone else at the same time? Is that possible? Is it okay?

It is possible; it is okay.

You see, feelings, they are not something that can be easily controlled. Love is the most uncontrollable emotion of all in my experience. Even when we want nothing else but to not love, we do so regardless.

It is perfectly acceptable to be confused and be in love with multiple people at the same time. This is what happens to us throughout life. We meet people that just absolutely enthrall us. We feel like better people around them. Their warmth makes this reality palatable in a way it would not be without them.

Feelings cannot be controlled but actions can.

Megan has known about my love for this woman since I first realized it myself. One thing we promised each other is that if we ever found feelings for someone else, we would tell the other person. So I told her, and our marriage counselor, not long after our wedding.

I had major feelings for this woman, still do, and always will. There’s a part of me that still believes I could live a life with her just as assuredly as I can with Megan.

But I don’t know —

and I do know that I can, have, and will with Megan. There is a bond there that now goes beyond attraction, beyond desire, beyond the superficial things that draw us together as people in the first place.

No matter the strength of my feelings for this other woman I never once acted upon them. I had already made a choice to be with Megan for very many reasons and she is one of the largest reasons why I am not dead in an alley or stuck in prison for the rest of my days.

There is a very sure chance that had I not met Megan this woman and I never would have met. Megan helped me find the job I met her at, even!

Only children make whimsical decisions like abandoning importance, because they don’t know any better.

I am a man. I can stand by that sentence in part because of my ability to choose Megan over this other woman years ago. But if I didn’t, what kind of man would I be? Could you even consider that type of person a man? I would have up and abandoned everything Megan and I had built together and were building together, for what?

For an idea of what else I could have instead?

Is that not greedy? Is that not egotistical and immoral? Were I to do that, regardless of how it would have turned out for me, I would have abandoned someone who I literally just helped crawl out of her own depths and madness. Megan and I are our own separate people, but we owe a lot of who we are to each other. If I had abandoned her it would have made me the definition of a scum bag.

Megan had done nothing wrong but love me, why would it be right for me to spurn that love for a chance with another? Especially with no idea, truly, if it would work out.

I think what I am trying to say here is that while a choice may not always be easy, there often is clarity about what choice should be made in a given situation. My mind may have been jumbled in all sorts of thoughts and emotions — but I still knew what the right choice was for me as a good person.

And in my heart of hearts, I truly believe she did too.

Not shortly after my wedding this wonderful woman made a choice. A choice that ego wants to tell me is in part because of our mutual affection and inability to pursue it. It’s not an answer I ever intend find out or spend any time on beyond this writing.

But I do like to think that she did us both a favor when she took another job opportunity and moved away. I do not know if we both could have stayed good people for too much longer. I like to believe so, but you can never know these things.

The love we shared was unspoken, but I can still feel it and grasp it within me today. She still inspires me, in a way, and when I said we are in touch earlier I did not mean that we speak often or even interact regularly online. We both still know what each other are up to at all times — just based on  my knowledge of social media. We support each other professionally.

I think I want to end this piece by repeating myself:

…what I am trying to say here is that while a choice may not always be easy, there often is clarity about what choice should be made in a given situation.

Do yourself a favor and listen to your mind as well as your heart. Put all things into perspective and take serious time to reflect on a decision before you make it.

Decisions like the ones that are relevant to this article are not the kind that can be made any more than once. Be sure you are confident in being comfortable in your choice for the rest of your life.

Because living with regret is a poison that eats us from the inside out.

I may still and forever feel loss. I will never feel regret.

Thank you for reading.

©2017 Trevor Elms
Featured photograph taken by Derek Lofgreen ©2013