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“Going to the chapel and we’re gonna get married…”
-Too lazy to google it.
My sister is getting married soon and holy fuck I am so stressed out. The groom’s mother is a controlling freak, the groom’s sister is a passive aggressive crybaby, and the groom (who I really truly adore?) seems to not want to stand up to his mother, his sister, when they aren’t nice to his future wife.
So this leaves me stressed out.
My sister talks to me about her stress.
My mom talks to me about her stress.
And me? I am having GRUESOME dreams like showing up nine months pregnant the day of the wedding (an impossibility, I assure you!) and delivering a stillborn baby the day of the wedding. What the hell, right?
It’s funny – things in my “REAL LIFE” have gotten so much better lately – not perfect, mind you – but better… And yet, here’s this wedding.
Thank god it’s an open bar.
Counseling went very well today.
We had a very low key week together (despite the chaos in other areas of our lives) – and our appointment today reflected that.
I am always Negative Nancy, but today was alright.
I wanted to share before I forgot to share. I’ll post more later, I promise.
what scares me
is that while you’re telling me stories
you actually
believe that they are real
-Ani DiFranco
It’s just stuck in my head tonight.
By the way, lame ass video… so press play and then do something else while it’s playing because otherwise you’ll be bored.
“(Do you know what today is?)
It’s our anniversary…”
-Tony Toni Tone
Well, no. Not today. Earlier in the week. We’ve been married nine years now.
I could do the math and tell you how many days that is, but that would be stupid. Also, pointless.
Our anniversary was probably better than I could have imagined. I felt that he took to heart when I said, “I don’t need big gifts – lots of jewelry – I need to know you pay attention to me.” My gifts were all little things, delivered throughout the day by various friends and family members – things like: a pair of socks, a gift card to a bookstore, Starbucks gift certificate, a pair of underwear (a fairly neutral pair – one purchased while our children were present, so… rated PG-13 ish). Each gift also included a piece of a letter – that would only make sense when all put together when all the gifts (there were 9 – yes, one for each year) were received).
Our 9th anniversary is one I’ll never forget
As it marks the start of our new life together
—- (Some things have to remain personal, y’all) —-
And although I’m no writer or poet
Let these words comfort you
And I appreciated the effort he extended to make the day special for me, to show me I am loved. My mom said to me, “He’s SO ROMANTIC. Isn’t he romantic? Don’t you think that is totally romantic?”
I’ve restrained myself from saying: “Back off, mom!” No, she doesn’t know we’re in counseling. She doesn’t know we’re struggling. Right now, it’s not really about romance, but rebuilding.
Our counselor recommended a book. I ordered it. It’s pretty religiously-focused and there’s a lot of words in it. I’m letting my husband read it first. He was intent on following through with the recommendation to read this book. Myself? I almost never take anyone’s book advice unless I know what else they’ve really enjoyed and how it meshes with my taste. I suppose this is kinda sorta different, since our counselor recommended it. I should have ordered two copies so we could read in tandem.
Yeah. Not happening.
So, that’s how it goes lately. It’s moving slowly. I’m such an impatient person. I wish things happened faster, sooner, easier.
But hey, life’s a big bitch that way, huh?
“And it’s mine on my own
Yes it’s mine all alone.”
-Candlebox
I’m so tired.
Everything is wearing me out. Staying up too late, waking up too early on top of that. I imagine part of that is avoidance. I don’t know what to say beyond surface stuff at the moment. I avoid opportunities to have deep discussions lest I get blindsided. We haven’t talked DEEPLY further beyond Monday’s discussion of needs, and I have to say, that’s more than okay with me.
I suspect more than one of you is reading this ready to whack me upside the head for sounding so defeated, for lacking optimism, for not trying harder.
My happy face gets tired. Here is where I let down my walls.
“I never asked you for
A sailboat in the yard
That fancy dress to wear
A ceiling made of stars…”
-Rosie Thomas
Please know this choice of a song means nothing – nothing except this song and it’s melody has been stuck in my head over the past few days. There’s not a farewell right now – I am working quite hard to do what I’m supposed to do even though it feels rigid and unnatural to me.
The thing is, my husband and I are great friends. Sometimes I think we miss the mark with each other romantically – and it didn’t always seem that way. I wonder why people don’t tell young people that more often. How freakin’ hard marriage is – but then I see my sister preparing for her upcoming wedding and I bite my tongue and say nothing because who wants to be the cynic who says, “Be prepared, keep your eyes open, because life happens, and sometimes you can’t always keep up and it’s hard to nurture your relationship with curveballs coming at you from every direction.”
She’s smarter than I am, though.
Her fiance has no kids. He’s never been married.
Sometimes I think that that ultimately the nucleus of what is wrong with us. Drama from my stepson, drama from the exwife, related money issues, even deeper drama with his son beyond the normal teenage boy stuff. And one too many times, my opinion and feelings were not taken into account and then we end up at this place where I feel like I really don’t matter much.
And I just want to matter.
I’m not good at therapy – it’s only been one session and I guess part of me wants to dig in my heels. Fortunately, I have friends who are snapping me into shape with virtual face slaps – because it IS hard. I dread going back and I dread dealing with issues and I dread sitting there crying while he’s stoic – because I’m an emotional mess and he’s… who he is. He’s emotional in his way, and I am in mine. He talks about the things going on as if he’s reciting a grocery list. Me? I’m honking into a kleenex.
I fight the part of me that says it’s because his feelings are any “less” than mine. They’re just different and he shows ‘em different and I have to accept that. I just wish it wasn’t so freakin’ complicated.
“I’m sick of myself when I look at you
Something is beautiful and true
In a world that’s ugly and a lie
Hard to even want to try
I’m beginning to think…
Baby you don’t know…”
-Matthew Sweet
Our first counseling appointment was Monday. I am not sure how I feel about it, except that I went in feeling an extreme sense of dread and left feeling like I had been run over by a Mack truck and really my first instinct is to RUN LIKE HELL in the other direction because I don’t know if I want to work this hard. I don’t have a lot of faith right now that he’s going to be able to make changes, and I don’t really know how long I have to feel like this – because right now? I’m so so so so sick of being sad.
A friend asked me the other day, “What do you want out of this?” I said that I didn’t want to be sad anymore. He said to me, “But that’s your mistake, you are focusing on what you don’t want instead of what you DO want.” But really? That’s because I have no idea what I want. What I am finding is that the core of who my husband is was definitely rooted long before I met him and even longer before that. The roots of how he is the way he is are pretty deep. I have a hard time feeling confident that someone can essentially change WHO he or she is.
Granted, I have some work to do as well. As the counselor said, it’s certainly on BOTH of us how it got to this point, but he wouldn’t go so far as to call it 50/50. He said that we had a lot of baggage in the room with us (no shit, sherlock… and for this we’re paying you how much an hour?).
I don’t know.
Maybe I’m not the type to be married. Maybe I belong by myself ruling the roost with my kids. Maybe I am the type to be married and we’ll fix it. Please don’t think I’m going into this completely tuning things out and not willing to do the work – because that’s not it. But right now, I am so fucking hurt. I have BEEN so fucking hurt. And I just want someone to unhurt me. Of course, you know, that’s not possible. Can’t undo what’s been done, can’t go back in time. Can’t erase. Can’t change stuff.
And so that’s the thing… I mean – how does it move forward from here? Is he going to be able to overcome his baggage (of which there is far more than I ever knew about and part of me is mad as fuck that he always used to say, “I have no secrets from you – why can’t I read your journal?” which led me to shredding my journals, when in fact he definitely had a secret and that’s not fair. Are there more?).
So – we’ve set our next appointment. We’ll go again on Monday and do some more talking. I don’t know. I spent so much time crying and he’s so clinical – he can be saying the most gruesome thing with this straight faced mask on – “do you feel anything?” But I know he does because while I was out of town last week, he called me. I was at a cocktail party with friends and he called because he couldn’t sleep. He said he was worried about us and needed to talk to someone. So, I left the party for awhile, sat in the lobby of the hotel and talked to him for awhile, telling him we had our appointment coming up and we’d learn what steps we needed to take next. We hung up – and from what he tells me, he was then able to go to sleep.
Me? I had sucked in all of his hurt and the guilt that I had caused that hurt. I proceeded to drink some wine, then some liquor and then more wine. Fantastic game plan, right? Yeah.
Therapist says I overfunction. I worry too much about how other people are going to react to the things I say that instead of saying things, I suck it all in. But he says it’s up to the others to own their own feelings and their own reactions. And that possibly, by my tailoring things to my husband’s mood, he’s become codependent on me – hence him not being able to sleep til I soothed his stress.
Yet… who’s soothing mine?
“Before you met me i was a fairy princess
I caught frogs and called them prince
And made myself a queen
Before you knew me i traveled ’round the world
I slept in castles and fell in love
Because i was taught to dream…”
-Faith Hill
I am only finding covers… which is okay. I like this one. It’s very different than Faith’s version.
“If she remembers, she hides it whenever we meet….”
-Counting Crows
For Contessa… Oh, baby doll. If you were listening to this song on repeat… I’m sorry. If you’re ever in a Sullivan Street Repeat mood, drop me an email.
It’s a beautiful song, though. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen them perform this one live. The last time I saw them, they performed “A Murder of One”, and since it’s the song I’ve been listening to a lot lately, kind of felt like maybe it was a sign. But, I don’t know if I believe in signs. If I did, though… that definitely was one.
