I guess that's why they call it the blues. in The Dark Craptastic (July 2019)

It seems to be a day for everyone on here. I’m sitting in my crappy chair, looking at my messy office, thinking about whether I want to clean it (I kind of do. I kind of don’t.)

I’m still pissed as hell at my husband.

Don’t worry about Jonquil, though: she has cat food. Enough to finish out her month. She’s an old lady, and doesn’t like dry, so she eats canned, and I bought it for her. I also bought the rest of the kitties’ noms for the rest of the month. They’ll be fine. The fury is because he wanted to risk their going hungry on the off chance he could ask a friend for money. This is not acceptable. I feel I am allowed to hit the roof on this. These are my cats. I love them. There has to be a PLAN for them. There are plans for the children, because I love them. There must also be plans for the cats.

And the amusing bit? They love him just as much as they do me, and he’s the one who couldn’t be bothered to MAKE SURE they’d be okay.

But this is how my spouse works. He says he loves you, he says he cares, but when you need something, you have to get it yourself. I’ve been wearing the same pair of broken glasses for 18 months, and I’ve needed dentures for the past nine years. He can’t even be bothered to call a dentist for the extraction dates for the teeth (still in there, broken, of course) and he can’t help me scrape up the cash for new glasses. I can’t use the phone freely. He’s usually waiting on a call back for something or other. I don’t have regular cell phone access. I do a lot of things online.

I only get two “paychecks” a year - both from school financial aid. He gets monthly checks (disability.) He also gets financial aid checks (his are quarterly.) Why can’t I be a priority? My check is already spent, naturally: I owe money I had to borrow for a down payment for a car, because it’s been over 19 years and he hasn’t taught me to drive, and when I taught myself, he wouldn’t let me have the car, and now I can’t afford insurance, so I can’t get a license. But I’ve got a car. Fuck you, Spouse.

He likes to make promises, but he doesn’t keep them. He promised to teach me to parallel park in 2016.

I finally taught myself that with Youtube. In April. But without car insurance, you can’t get licensed. So I’m driving illegally.

This does not stop him from asking me to pick up everything under the sun. Today, he demanded milk and diet Mountain Dew as I went out the door. To buy the cat food that he had no plan to get to, despite the fact that anyone can see the bin was getting low and the cans on the counter were dwindling.

While I was gone, he didn’t make the girls lunch. Despite the fact that “he cooks better than I ever have.”

They ate my tuna salad sandwiches just fine when I got back. They weren’t on fancy homemade bread that he could bake “anytime,” but I guess if it’s there, plain old Franz white works fine.

This is just a bit of the top layer of the ways I am coming to hate my husband. I don’t know what happened. He took my therapist appointments for the year and turned them to “marriage counseling” appointments, and then he stopped making those appointments. He couldn’t use “his” yearly allotment of therapy appointments because he is on Medicare and they don’t take that insurance, but they did take mine.

But that was the only place I had that I could run my mouth. When he took me: I don’t go on I-5 yet, and the therapist’s office is by the mall, and I can’t get there if he doesn’t take me.

I missed a lot of visits.

I haven’t seen the doctor in years. I can’t go because I can’t get there alone quite yet.

I have diabetes and other issues. I am supposed to get regular screenings for some of them. I haven’t, in years.

He goes most weeks.

I don’t think I can save this relationship, and a big part of me doesn’t want to. I don’t think I ever want to love again, if this is love.

But I really miss sex, just the same. Go figure.