The Magic Is Gone

On evolving love

We’re sitting on opposite ends of our oversized, L-shaped couch. I’ve been sick with the flu for a week, so naturally, I’m unshowered, wearing yesterday’s clothes, and surrounded by used tissues and cough drop wrappers.

He’s sitting what feels miles away, double-screening it as he finishes work while we “watch a show together.”

We haven’t had a meaningful conversation in days. Life feels so full and our bodies so tired. Every day we exhaustedly say, “We need a date night.” But we rarely actually plan one.

I sigh.

I think about the teenagers who couldn’t keep their eyes off each other. Who would do anything for five more minutes together. Who got married young because “when you know, you know.”

I think a thought I wish I didn’t:

The magic is gone.

I’m practically breaking my back to scoop up the third round of food on the floor as my toddler learns how to eat spaghetti with a fork. 

The day went by too slowly to call it “easy” but too quickly to fit in any time for myself.

He comes home, scatter-brained from a long day in front of the computer and in draining meetings. I’m scatter-brained from meeting the needs of a little human all day. We’re both too tired to ask meaningful questions about one another’s day.

I think about my idealistic expectant-mother self, lounging on a pool chair on our babymoon, flaunting my belly in a bikini and confidently reminding my husband that “parenthood doesn’t have to change us.”

I let out an audible groan (to which my toddler replies, “Awe you otay, Mommy?”).

The magic is gone.

We had a date night in tonight, but he was hurt by how much I kept checking my phone. I was hurt that he was home late. Even when we finally bring our romantic date night vision to reality, something always feels disappointing.

We fight. Someone brings up a topic that stresses the other out. He doesn’t notice the new shirt I feel cute in. I don’t make space for his feelings. Or we simply can’t decide on a movie to watch and never fully relax.

Why can’t we ever get it right these days?

I’m not dumb.

I knew this would be hard. 

But I’m also embarrassed to admit that part of me thought “for better or for worse” was mostly just a formality, not a prophecy. I didn’t think the valleys could get this low or the light grow so dim. I didn’t think the magic could disappear. 

I remember the era of passionate kisses and butterflies and engagement ring catalogues and “you hang up firsts.” I lament over the lost simplicity and eagerness and innocence of that time. 

2015, homecoming

But then I remember something else. 

I remember when things were fresh and exciting, we’d sit and dream of 

lazy Sunday mornings at home

arguing about chores

taking care of each other when we were sick

mouthing “love you” through exhausted lips across the room 

sneaking out for a long-overdue date night

growing our love through more humans

watching each other become parents

knowing each other deeper than we could ever imagine

We’d stand at my front door for an hour saying, “One day, you won’t have to leave. For the rest of our lives, no matter how hard our days are, we’ll be together at the end of each one.”

And to all of those dreams, we’d squeal, “Won’t that be magic?”

This life is what we were dreaming of. 

This was always the point. The visions of the life we’re living right now are what made that initial, beautifully irresistible season magic. 

Then I realized something else.

The magic isn’t gone. 

It’s just that life is so full of magic that I hardly notice it anymore. 

Just like a fish never says “I’m wet,” I never stop and think, “my life is magic” because magic is the water I’m swimming in. 

Magic is so beautifully, indescribably, ordinarily embedded in our days that I don’t even recognize it most of the time.

Many of the 2D dreams in our minds that made that initial season so exciting are now part of our three-dimensional reality.

We are living in the magic we dreamed of. 

So I won’t envy the magic of the season before–because I remember how I once longed for the magic I’m currently living in. 

And I thank the magic that got us here because it’s the reason we’re living in magic now. 

But I do love when once in a while—through a knowing ‘cross-the-room glance or an it’s-an-inside-joke smile or a few-seconds-longer-than-normal kiss—that initial magic still finds its way through. 

Magic is feeling the mundanity, the complexity, the disappointment, and the distraction—and choosing love anyway.

The magic is no longer a spark; it’s a slow burn. It’s a magic that lasts, and grows, and fuels us. 

And if we’re fortunate enough to experience the equally-as-beautiful grey hair, empty nester, slow mornings kind of magic in the future, I’ll count myself extremely lucky. 

The magic isn’t gone. It’s growing. It’s ours.