On love - On marriage

"I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer." ~Jim Carrey

I think if anyone has illusions that marriage is all fun and games, they ought to take a peek at True Wife Confessions. I get sad, sometimes, reading post after post of downers about marriage, so I don't go there very often. I know that the site is primarily a place where women go to discuss things they feel they cannot discuss with other people--the ugly stuff, the embarrassing stuff, the sad stuff. There's a lot of anger there, too, and it's not under the surface either; it's raw and incredibly heartbreaking.

It didn't dawn on me until just recently how much of marriage seems centered around "the man" and making him happy--how marriage seems like it's something men get more out of than women. The expectations that women have placed on them to be everything to everyone are staggering and impossible to live up to, while men are expected to bring home a paycheck and if they do that then they're pretty much golden. Most of the women I know who are in marriages that would be considered "good," feel as though men benefit from marriage more than women do. This isn't a bunch of woe-is-me women pulling nonsensical theories out of thin air, it's real women looking at their lives objectively and feeling like the scales are tipped in favor of men more times than not in relationships, and saying to themselves that if they ever did get divorced, they'd never, ever marry again.

I feel that way, too, mostly because I married young when I could not know what it took me over 20 years to learn. And it has nothing to do with my husband--it's more about me wanting to experience life on my own terms--because I've never done that. I've always been defined by the relationships in my life that have ultimately taken over my life.

When I was growing up, I was told that getting married and having kids was what women should want for themselves, and I bought into that without question. I feel a little disappointed in myself that I never challenged what other people felt was my lot in life, that I did not dare think for myself because ultimately, that is what it was. I look back and think I've sleepwalked though parts of my life when I should have been awake and paying attention. I wonder, sometimes, why no one slapped me into consciousness, why no one looked out for me. Was it a generational thing? I don't know. All I know is that I would never presume to chart the course of anyone's destiny the way certain people felt entitled to chart mine while I went along like a good little girl who could not think for herself. I try not to dwell on it too much because it makes me angry. Why didn't I fight more for what I wanted? I just kind of went along. It's maddening. I really piss myself off.

My husband is always telling me how much he and the kids love me and I jokingly tell him that doesn't surprise me one bit because if I wasn't me, I'd be in love with me, too. I mean, who wouldn't love someone who does everything and expects so little in return?

I learned a friend of mine is getting a divorce because her husband cheated on her. For three days now, this is all I can think about. I cannot tell you how this breaks my heart because I want to believe in the sort of love that lasts forever, in the sort of love that takes commitments and vows seriously. I want to believe that love and marriage cannot be traded away carelessly after too much booze and too little thought, but this is what happens every day all around me. I want to believe that people are too smart to fall for that grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side bullshit, but we do it all the time. We think what we have is not enough, or not exciting enough. It's this constant looking outside of ourselves for something to fill us up. I don't get throwing away a family for a little fun that simply CANNOT be worth what it costs you in the end.

I'm not even sure what the point of this post is. I think a common theme of my blog is that love isn't easy. I never want people to walk away thinking I don't believe in marriage or love, because I do. But I think the day in and day out of it is tricky and difficult to navigate at times, and I think pretending that it is not does a disservice to everyone.

As often as I am disenchanted by love, I am swept up and away by how wondrous it is. Those are the times I try to keep with me. Those are the times I hold close.

Love notes

"...You are the dreamer~ And we are the dream~ I could write it better than you ever felt it..."~FOB

Almost every morning before leaving for work, my husband leaves me a little love note of sorts on post-it note paper. Sometimes he takes 2 or 3 to get the whole message down. They say things like "you are gorgeous" or that "you are my love" or he'll write, "I'll catch you later, baby." Some days the love notes will veer away from love and become mini to-do lists for me. They will say "don't forget to pay the bills," or "remember to pick up my clothes at the cleaners" or "please water the lawn." I'm not fond of the to-do list notes because I've never liked people telling me what to do. I usually crumble those up and toss them into the trash immediately so that I don't get all hateful inside first thing in the morning.

The true love notes, I keep hidden in one of my junk drawers. I have many junk drawers and maybe one organized one because I can't seem to keep things in order to save my life. I aspire to be more organized, I think about how wonderful it would be to be more organized, but I never actually do anything about it. I don't have all my crap together and don't ever want anyone to think for a minute that I do. I think the people in my life who love me best, love me mostly for all the ways in which I am not perfect.

Because I believe in the power of love, because I think that love can make all the difference in a world where I sometimes feel so insignificant and small, I stack the love notes I have saved one on top of the other so that I can pull them out and read them when I need to be reminded that I am lovable, that I am loved.

Scattered thoughts

A small, hard callous has formed on the palm of my hand beneath my ring finger from my wedding rings. I pick at it sometimes. My rings sometimes feel like they are suffocating me. Periodically, I take them off to give my finger a rest. Hours later I can run my finger around the space where the rings always sit and I can still feel the mark they leave behind. I wonder how long it would take before it would feel like they were never there.

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I was doing some cleaning/organizing and came upon some old pictures that I never got around to putting in a photo album. They were from my oldest daughter's graduation and in one picture my daughter stands between my husband and myself and I am smiling. What kills me about this photograph is that I was going through a very difficult time and you would never know it by looking at that picture. I think photos only tell one side of the story, or maybe photos just outright lie sometimes.

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My new guilty pleasure is having the mug shots of those people in my county who've been arrested the night before delivered to my in box each morning. A friend sent me the link and all I had to do was supply my email address and I started receiving all the dirt. I love pouring over the faces and guessing what they've done to get arrested, then clicking on the photo to see if I am right. Some young girls who have been arrested pose as though they are on a photo shoot for America's Next Top Model. This kills me, too.

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I was glad to see Matt sent packing last night on Hell's Kitchen. His eyebrows alone were grounds for dismissal in my opinion. Guys with feminine looking eyebrows are something I dislike. I'm not into feminine looking men especially when they whine like babies about having a migraine. Also, Matt had a diary room interview where he called one of the women on the show a "bitch with lots of cellulite." Unacceptable!!! Men who could stand to lose 40 lbs. themselves should not be dispensing weight comments as though they are Brad Pitt. Good riddance to that sweaty slob.

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We're having breakfast for dinner tonight because it's too hot to do anything more. There is a fly buzzing around this house and it is fast as lightening. It must have slipped into the house when I was dragging groceries inside. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a fly buzzing around my house that I can't catch. My goal for tonight will be tracking that thing down and swatting it to death.

Rage - Scenes from her life - Story #1

A husband and wife sat across from each other in a booth where they were eating Chinese food. The wife ordered, then the husband ordered. and then they started to talk about a recent disappointment in their lives which they eventually agreed was small in the grand scheme of things. They agreed to be happy and remember how blessed they were to have all the good things they had in this life.

Out of the blue, the wife said to her husband, "I want you to know that lately I've been filled with rage," because she had been filled with rage lately and she didn't know who else she could share this terrible secret with besides him.

The husband said, "What are you talking about? Your life is wonderful."

The wife replied, "I know what you think you know about my life, and I am telling you that you are wrong. I am filled with rage, and the only way that I'm finding I can deal with the rage is by making sure that I put myself first for a change and stop worrying all the time about other people's happiness. I am becoming bitter from all the years of taking care of other people and never feeling like I am making anyone happy. I am sacrificing things that I want to do because in the back of my mind I am thinking this will result in their happiness but when it doesn't, I am left to ask myself what I am doing with my life except wasting my time?"

The husband looked uncomfortable and worried and clueless as all at once and immediately told his wife that she was being over dramatic. He asked her, "Well does this mean will I have to worry about you along with everyone else now?"

And the wife took a deep breath and explained to him one more time that her happiness and well being should be of concern to him, that he should be worrying whether she was happy because she worried about his happiness all the time, and isn't that what married couples do?

She told him, "The fact that you do not worry about my happiness makes me crazy. It makes me feel like I have no one in this world looking out for me and if that is the case, as it has been proven time and time again, then I'm going to take matters into my own hands and start looking out for myself."

The husband looked everywhere except at his wife and said, "Where is this coming from? I thought we were going to focus on the positive?"

The wife replied, "You don't understand. Just because I point out to you something that bothers me doesn't mean that I do not recognize all the wonderful things that I have. One has nothing to do with the other, and I don't want every conversation that I start about me to turn into a conversation about somebody or something else because that's what always happens here."

The husband looked around, and the wife could tell by his eyes that he was shocked and sad and panicked to hear these words come out of his wife. "Can't you just be happy." he pleaded? "I'm happy."

And this is the part of the story where the wife was always losing because she knew in her heart that at best, what we know of each other is what we allow others to see of us, and sometimes, even when show them what's beneath the surface, all they want to see is what they want to see.

The wife finished her diet coke, fished an ice cube out of the glass, and crushed it between her teeth because it felt good to her to crush something.

They paid the bill, walked to the car and began their drive home. The wife leaned her head against the cool glass and looked up at the stars. She felt so small, almost invisible, but she did not tell her husband this because she wasn't up to hearing once again how very lucky she was.

Hugs

Every once in a while my husband will say to me, “You must not have been given enough hugs when you were growing up.” He says this because I am not a big hugger. I do not subscribe to the “you need 12 hugs a day to be happy” theory. I do not feel as though I need hugs in order to be happy, or know that I am loved.

But he is right, I did not receive a lot of hugs when I was growing up. The first time he said this to me, I felt really insulted because it felt like a judgment. Actually, it still feels like a judgment but it’s one I am able to accept as based in truth. I never connected my lack of hugging skills to my childhood until he brought it up. I got defensive because it hit a nerve. I felt like he was telling me that I was not a loving person because I do not go around shouting I LOVE YOU a million times a day or grabbing my children or him and insisting we hug the life out of each other. I find him really needy with all this hugging business and it irritates me because I am not needy in that way. It’s hard for me to understand what the big deal is about hugs.

You see, for me, a hug means nothing if five minutes later you’re on my case for not cleaning out the refrigerator. I’d much rather be shown love than be told I am loved. It’s the old “actions speak louder than words” routine that I live by and subscribe to.

This hugging thing has made me think about how much we are products of our upbringings. Our childhoods are spent soaking up information which shape us. We move through the world based on how we learned to live while we were growing up. If you haven’t been hugged a lot, you do not know that you should miss it or that you should do it regularly without being prompted or asked, which is what happens all the time with me.

I cannot pass by my husband without him saying he needs a hug. I have to consciously tell myself not to look annoyed or let out a big aggravated sigh because that’s my first thought when he keeps requesting them. I am thinking, “Don’t you see how I do everything for you and can’t you make the jump from that to knowing that I love you?” Because that’s what I do. I see the things he does and I instinctively know without being told that I am loved. A five second hug doesn’t change anything for me. It seems simple enough to me.

I worry, though, that maybe I have failed my children in the hugging department. I mean, just because I don’t require hugs doesn’t mean that others might not need them. And it's not like I never hug them, because I do--just not every single time they pass by me like it seems some people do. I trust that they know that love is more than words or hugs. It’s the day to day living and giving and nurturing which translate into love. I think back to my childhood and ask myself if my lack of hugs made me feel unloved and I can honestly say that no it did not.

I find hugging superfluous and have to force myself to hug all the time because it does not come naturally.

But that does not mean I love any less because I don’t.

I can do anything for 24 hours

"A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart." - Johann Wolfgang Goethe, from "Faust"

When my husband works from home, I get nothing done that I really need to do. He makes phone calls and is loud and every little inconvenience is magnified to the point of ridiculousness and I just try to stay out of his way because I get "shushed" a lot and being "shushed" makes me just a little angry.

So that was my day today.

We did go out to lunch and that was nice and I got my run in so I don't feel like smacking anyone or screaming bloody murder.

He leaves tomorrow morning for three days.

I can't wait!