Familiarity

 It's funny how something we somehow saw coming can still sting as if it arrived out of nowhere.

As if there were no signs at all.

As if you never expected it to happen, or perhaps you convinced yourself it would simply pass—that you'd just shrug it off and move on.

A few months ago, I shared one of my favorite English sayings with a member of my team:

"Familiarity breeds contempt."

The phrase is often attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer, and at the time, it felt like the perfect lesson to give.

He had just come off an impressive probationary period. Among his peers, he stood out. He was dependable, eager to learn, and consistently delivered good work. But once he became comfortable in the role—when it mattered most—a few minor lapses began to appear. They weren't major mistakes, but they kept happening.

As his leader, I stepped in.

I told him never to let his guard down, even when the work felt as familiar as the back of his hand. Because sometimes, it's the things we know best that we become careless with. It only takes one moment for a memorable mistake to happen.

In safety, there's a saying that accidents are always just one mishap away. Excellence isn't usually lost overnight either. It fades through small, repeated mistakes that we stop noticing because they've become routine.

And when the same mistake keeps happening, it usually means only one thing:

You never truly learned from the last one.

It was a lesson I genuinely believed in.

Little did I know, I should have been telling it to myself, too.

Not about work.

About us.

About the problems I could no longer carry.

I still miss you, Dani.

I'm sorry that, for a while, I let familiarity settle in. And somehow, it bred contempt.

If I were ever given the chance to replace one thing from our time together, it wouldn't be the hardships. It wouldn't even be the distance.

It would be the arguments.

The fights that turned into more fights.

The conversations where we spent more time trying to win than trying to understand.

I'd trade every one of them for just a little more peace with you.

Because if there's one thing I know now, it's that love deserves our attention the most when it starts feeling familiar.

And I never wanted to waste our time fighting, my lovey.

I only wanted to spend it loving you.