A Post on Marriage and Special Needs Life: The Real Deal
I love my husband.
I do.
But sometimes I have to remind myself of that.
Some days I have to repeat it to myself over and over and over again just to keep from punching him.
One night last week I threw a bag of frozen rolls on the floor, told him to "go to hell" and walked out.
Because nothing makes your point better than frozen rolls? Am I right? (A sweet sweet friend of mine who shall remain nameless once threw a crock pot on the floor. Now that is bad-ass. But it was also costly, so I went with the rolls.)
The struggle is real.
And yesterday the struggle was real. And dirty. And hateful. The things we spewed at each other were so so hateful and mean. I can't even repeat them because I don't want to think about them. And even as we spewed those hateful things, in the back of my head, I was thinking: This is not us. We don't mean this. But my mouth was meeting his match for match; I was not to be outdone or outwitted or outscored on hateful comments. An eye for an eye. I see your hateful comment and I raise you ten more hateful comments.
So if we "truly" love each other, why were we being so cruel?
Because I've decided that life makes you ugly.
Life does that.
Any life; pick a life.
You know what I'm talking about, right?
(If you don't, just shut up and go snuggle with your husband by the fire and gloat that you have it better than everyone else......)
To the rest of you who are working stressful jobs and raising kids and making lunches and volunteering at schools and being a human taxi service and sweet Lord just trying to make it through the day with a teeny-tiny bit of sanity left, this post is for you.
Please listen to me.
You don't hate your husband (or wife).
Life is making you ugly.
We've been struggling since November people. Every. single. day. We've listened to screaming and crying and melt down after melt down and we can't turn on the child causing the havoc because it's not his fault, so we did the next best thing yesterday: we turned on each other. We took all the angst, all the stress, all the frustrations, all the sadness, all the pain that our youngest is feeling and we turned it into hatred for each other. And it was nasty. Nasty to the point that he said to me last night after I got home from an event, "I wasn't sure if you were coming home tonight?" And I thought, I sure as hell didn't want to.
And now we start the slow, awkward crawl towards forgiveness and understanding and finding US again. Because we're in there somewhere. I know we are. Because let me tell you something - when life doesn't make us ugly - we are so so good together. We laugh and we love and we care for each other like it's nobody's business.
We are worth fighting for.
We are worth forgiveness.
And we both need it.
BOTH of us.
Sometimes when you are so busy pointing the finger at your spouse, it's easy to forget that you're human and flawed as well......
So if this post resonates with you in some way, hang in there. If life is turning you ugly, recognize that you're in the thick of things and maybe, just maybe, you're letting situations guide your marriage and not love. Remember that you're human and so is he. Take a break, cool off, and when you come back together, remember the awkward won't last forever. Believe me, we've done this crawl before. It's going to be awkward for a little bit. We're going to tip-toe for a little bit and try not to upset the delicate balance of the tight rope we're walking.
But soon, we'll find our way back because we'll fight like hell to find our way back.
We always do.
Soon we'll be laughing and joking about colon cleanses and bowel movements and how different Valentine's Day looks after 15.5 years of marriage.......
Soon, we'll remember that we're not ugly.
We're not.
We're not.
But life sure as heck can be.
PS - I wrote this post a few weeks ago and things are much better. Perfect? Nope. But better. We're making little changes to make more time for each other. We're trying something called kindness. It does amazing things in a marriage. Amazing things. Will we have setbacks? Yes. Will we keep fighting? Hell yes!!
Can I get an AMEN?
