Relief

I felt it when I disembarked from the plane coming home from Ohio long ago.  I feel it again now.  Not all the same, but like a sudden ability to breathe again.  Like a hot shadow falling further behind.  It’s still close now, but the fact that it feels so good to even think about leaving it seems telling.  

Adapting to situations that become more and more untenable is a gradual process.  One doesn’t realize the little daily oppressions until they stack up or are put in sharp contrast with something else.  Or unless good friends help you see.  

Just walking around today away from the house at the farmer’s market there have been dozens of little guilty confining thoughts that I can start to practice dismissing.  I was able to buy produce without worrying that he’d say there was too much or “The fridge is too packed.  Where do you think that will fit?”  I didn’t think about needing to get him something for lunch that he would then likely critique and then say something like, “But thank you anyway for trying.”  I do dread having to go home to whatever awaits there.  I know he will try again to convince me that I’m in the wrong and all his behavior is my fault for neglecting and not validating him.  

Certainly, I’m not the most attentive wife.  I do like my space.  I do like my own time.  I do enjoy going out with my friends or alone.  I do also, however, find it discouraging to go back to him over and over to try to get his attention to be turned away at least 8 times out of 10.  Some of which he would not even see me standing near him as he was so focused on his current gaming situation.  I’d just turn and go back up the stairs to wait until he was between games or ready to interact.  

There seems to have been a lot of waiting, actually.  Waiting for him to be rested, fed, the perfect temperature, nothing sticky for him to see or accidentally touch.  Nothing to make his hands rough or dirty.  

Every once in a while, more often lately, he will show me his hands, holding them out and looking down at them, turning them over, smiling, “I mean look at my hands.  Feel them.  They are pristine.”  “Yeah.”  I’d smile, thinking that is exactly the opposite of what I’d like in a partner’s hands.  I’d like them dirty with life, rough calloused, with helping outside, blistered from shoveling, splinters from the wood chips, dirt under the nails, cuts healing. Hands to be able to both hold onto life without being disgusted with its stickiness and heat and general discomfort.  

Hands to hold onto me even when I’m sweaty or wet or hot or sticky or dirty or covered in tears.  I don’t want pristine hands to hold me.  His are hands that spend thousands of hours caressing a plastic mouse, clinking passionately on a lighted keyboard, tracking behind eyes focused on a screen and ears listening to sounds of digital death and destruction.  

At the expense of mine.  His hands can be like that because mine are not.  

It’s been a thousand tiny heart-mincing slices.  Some small, some bigger.  Added up feeling pulverized into a shape no longer recognizing the frequency of the insults to the once living tissue. 

The times I’d ask him to go places and he declined with excuses of fatigue, or overwhelm, or anticipated displeasure in my company.  The times I’d come home after work to silence of him sleeping and our daughter staring alone at a screen.  The times after that when he would complain that she spent too much time on the screen and that I should monitor her more.  He’d gone to sleep because he knew I would be home and could “take over.”

The Tuesdays that he looked forward to my day off so I could be with Genevieve and he could have hours of uninterrupted gaming sessions without having to worry about obligations.  The hundreds of take out meals he ordered because I hadn’t done the dishes so he couldn’t use the kitchen, or he was too tired or out of it to think of anything to cook.  Stacking up on the DoorDash bills.  The groceries he ordered online then complained when he messed up or they got it wrong or texted him too many times with questions during their collection.  The eight bags of potatoes he ordered accidentally then expected me to clean up the consequences on the cluttered counters.  

He is so upset with the messes that we make.  More important to him to have a tidy house.  “I have asked you 1000s of times!  The house like this stresses me out!  I have tried to adjust and put up with your messes but I just want a little consideration.  Just a few things kept tidy.  Is that too much to ask?!”  Followed by a retreat downstairs for hours until he’d reset himself somehow and come up to sulk and wait for us to apologize or have cleaned something up.  “I dread the weekends you know–because you guys trash the house so bad.”

I think actually he will be far happier eventually living without us.  Or that’s the picture he’s painted for me.  I am a messy bother to him.  He suggested that if I can’t manage to keep up with my chores that we should hire someone to come in to “help me” a couple times per week while he slept or gamed.  

The more I stack things up, the more outrageous the details sound.  

To be fair, he’s done some sweet things, also.  He prides himself on giving perfect presents and he does hit the mark sometimes.  There are beautiful baskets for the garden and he did discover the amazing Japanese Garden knife and get me one.  

Though even then, I have not liked all the gifts, but I’ve chosen to pretend that I do instead of deal with his hurt feelings.  The giant rhododendron was lovely for a couple days and now I have to take care of it in a pot, or dig a gigantic hole and worry about it dying.  The glass perfume bottle he got me is beautiful, but I’m not sure what to do with it so it’s another item that fills up the house that is already so irritatingly full to him. 

He made us dinner countless times, arranging it nicely on the  plates he served piping hot, silently expecting praise and notice and floods of gratitude each time.  Irritated if we waited too long and they cooled so we could not experience the perfection of the meal. 

Maybe even the things he did for “us” were in some way for him to extract admiration from us.  That’s the old question if anyone is ever actually not making selfish acts.  I think some people do.  I think he doesn’t.  

In Scotland, I remember trying to covertly coach my family to not upset him and to pay him extra attention for any generous act.  Because the consequences  of his feelings being hurt would last for days and he would claim that he would remember those slights forever.  There would be no recovery, just a constant slow and gradual descent into disgust and anger. 

I don’t think he behaves this way with malintent necessarily.  He doesn’t see the extent to which if is damaging to those around him.  Yet, if you tell him about the damage, he also doesn’t hear you.  And what else is there to do?

I know his criticisms and particularities were not always this pronounced.  He used to enjoy that we would go for walks and I could make people smile.  Now he feels upset and jealous when they only talk to me and not him.  I don’t know why this has changed and devolved so drastically.  I tried to figure it out.  I tried to remind him who he was.  I tried to help.  I tried to sympathize.  All there seems left is to try to push him to figure it out himself.