The 'glue that binds us together'. So it seems it was deteriorating. With age - after all, it was over twenty years old. And with stress - particularly the stress of so much separation in the past 10 years. It looked fine. It felt fine. (It was being taken for granted.) Suddenly - *rip*.

When you think about it, it needs to be a pretty special kind of glue to be able to be able to keep sticking two parts together when you keep, physically, pulling them apart over and over again - with one part being sent away to work for days or weeks at a time. What glue does that? Actually, there is one - something like the glue on Post-it notes! Although even that doesn't keep sticking forever. It gets dust and dirt and fluff in it, and it basically fatigues, and one day it just doesn't stick anymore... Or it gets accidentally stuck to something else, and you have to rip it off that and put it back where it belongs, and hope to make it stick again.

Sorry, my mind is running rampant with glue analogies... I started off thinking about this amazing glue we discovered just before we went rafting on the Franklin River oh so many years ago. (Which is why it seems like an apt glue analogy for me to use) It was a glue you could use to patch the rafts - but it wasn't just any glue you could buy at a hardware store. He sourced it directly from 3M... I can't remember why it was so damned good now, but it was flexible, dried quickly, and possibly even worked if the rubber was wet. From that discovery, he always held the company 3M in high esteem, and probably rightly so - I think it was them that invented the post-it note glue as well. Apparently that company encouraged individuality and uniqeness, and allowed its workers to experiment beyond the usual accepted standard practices.

So, this special glue we seemed to have looked to be holding up well. Well enough for me to expound on its virtues only a few weeks ago. Then, my god, there is this sudden rip - this failure. By some miracle I discover it before irretrievable damage is done - although at first that was hard to gauge. Somehow over the weekend we seem to have come up with a new improved glue. It is basically the same as the old one - a recognition of how frigging good that old glue really is. But we have had to add (and urgently) more of a particular, important compound. We have improved that compound - communication - and added more. To activate it, it had to have forgiveness.. and, while I was unsure if it was wise to add it almost immediately, I think it was critical. There is an almighty dose of fear mixed up in it too - the sort of heart pounding fear of realising that what you were doing without thinking of the consequences just about sent you hurtling over a precipice, dragging everyone else that matters with you, even though they weren't involved in the stupid thing you were doing.

Last night, after working with the communication compound, I added some empathy, I suppose you might call it. An 'actually...I don't know that I wouldn't have made the same mistake in a similar situation'.

And he has made the ultimatum to his work that the separations just cannot happen any more, forthwith, and the response has come back that it should be possible.

So it seems very, very strong, this new improved glue, especially with the promise of no further separations. I am a bit wary. It hardly seems possible that we could come up with the 'fix' so quickly, and without any help. But the urgency was there to do something, fast. It would be just so stupid to throw it all away if it can be repaired, and even come back better than ever.

There are the scars of course. I'm a bit concerned about them. I don't know that the glue has miracle healing qualities as well - although it seems to have some sort of soothing balm, particularly when you apply more of the communication compound. It is not possible that a gash like that can heal that quickly so we will have to keep a close eye on potential infection, or the tears opening up again.

I think we will be ok. Ironically, this week, there is no time to go and get some counselling compound to add to it. Ironically? Because we only have a few days now to be ready for the Bike Ride on Saturday, and it is us doing that sort of thing together that usually always kept the glue working so well. Afterwards, though, I'm sure it won't help to test out further compounds... It is worth pretty much anything to make sure that our glue doesn't fail ever, ever again.

In terms of me, personally, coping with the shock of it all, I've needed to unload somewhere, however uncomfortable that must make him. I don't know whether I've done the right thing... and by not telling all, some might imagine even worse scenarios that the reality... but I have to draw a line somewhere, finding the happy medium between spilling my guts, and keeping some things sacred. It seems weird that this semi-anonymous cyber-network of other women around the world can give me so much support and care just by the words you all write, but believe me, it's amazing. Thank you.

Labels: introspection