What would I be doing if not him? I spend real time thinking about this, but always come to the same place: I'd be running more miles on the treadmill. I'd be up too late hand sewing bits of felt into layers of more stupid felt. I'd be reorganizing the spice cabinet. Again. I'd be writing, sure, but what? Long entries in my journal, thinly veiled prose about an aching nameless need... One of those is enough. I should have just tapped out an ellipses every day that passed after the first entry I wrote of that nature. Someone practical might clear their throat and suggest, "Um, you could work on your marriage?" Which is the same kind of advice I'd have offered in my prior life, under my breath, to people who didn't need it.
My marriage has been consistently what we both signed up for. My marriage, my husband, our relationship has never been broken. Marriage is beautiful and I hope as long as humans exist some people are still going for it. It's not the idea of marriage that is flawed. It's applying it to human beings that fucks it up. We are only soft-wired for shit like that. By the time our parents/educators/church community/etc. see us off to college and take us off their list of auto updates, and we are left only with the stock we came with, it's too late. Everything we installed and invested in before that time is, unbeknownst to us, incompatible with our basic operating faculties. But we were programmed to rely on the trial versions of supplemental programs we can't afford or otherwise access after our memberships have expired. We're left with glitchy widgets and shortcuts to nowhere and a lot of frustration we're too ashamed to name. Because the only thing that's changed is our selves. If I had it to do over I'd never burden someone I respect and love with the task of dealing with me until I die when I cannot know if I will even be able to deal with future versions of myself.
If he has undergone a change that makes him feel the same way, I can't tell. But he should. I would like to see him move past the things that plagued him when he was 20. Is he forcing himself to stay in that insecure space as part of his pledge to me? I fucking hope not. If growing meant outgrowing his need for me I'd never deny him that.
I can't say I'm happier, but worse would be living the same happy day in a sickening, neverending loop.
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