Saturday, March 15, 2014

Don't blow up the dolly house

Well, there you go. I tempted the fates, got caught by hubris. I dared to suggest all is well and sure enough, it isn't. My husband is in his cave. I don't know if I drove him there or not, maybe I did. Or maybe I was just absorbing some energy from the air between us that made me act out last night. He refused to go there with me, he was very mature. He said, I am trying not to fight with you. I was grateful for that. I had lobbed dynamite at his cave to try and smoke him out, to try and see what's up, and of course, it makes him go deeper inside. He is so deep inside this morning it's like he's not here. His robot self is here, but he, his light that dances, has completely disappeared. I don't know what is up. I feel terribly insecure, despite 28 years of marriage and weeks upon weeks of good humor and harmony, suddenly, this distance again, and the stories I make up. I am trying to remember that I absorb darkness as much as I absorb light, and that sometimes what feels like my own tragedy is really someone else's, and I have lost the boundary of where they end and I begin. I don't know what is up with him, why he has shut down. Is it me? Of course it's me. Of course it's not me. It is both. I need to stop trying to reach him, stop trying to find him inside the empty eyes and monotone answers, which always feels to me like a withdrawal of love. Baby, it's cold inside. I need to leave the house early and stay gone all day, so that I will avoid the temptation to light that fuse, cause the kind of explosion that could wreck us for sure, even if we have survived such explosions before. Somehow, when we are in this hollow, the dark airless pit, it seems as if this is how it's going to be from here on out, as if something fundamental has been broken. I am trying, like a grown up, to remember that we have been here before, we have passed through this valley before and made it to the other side. I just need to swallow the words that arrange themselves in my throat, ready to fly like knives, the flouncing of a scared child, unsure of her safety, unsure she will survive what comes. Where was that child born, I wonder? In the wine I drank Thursday night with my women friends? Is that what has upset my chemistry? In a childhood of functional and dysfunctional alcoholics, none of whom were cruel to me, but who I was always so aware could be lost to me at any moment? Where did I learn that nothing is ever for sure, and why do I fear it so? This might be just the weather inside me, a hurricane I'm cooking up all on my own, but I don't think so. I'm responding to something. All is not well. I do not feel emotionally safe. Am I aching for something that does not exist? Is emotionally safety ever and always an illusion? This morning, I don't actually know.

7 comments:

  1. This must be how my husband feels when I go into my cave. Which I do and which has nothing to do with him at all. It must be horrible. I am so sorry that I do that to him and I am sure your husband does not mean to do it to you.
    Marriage. God, it is hard sometimes. When it's good, it's the best thing ever. When it's not good...it's too hard.
    I always try to remind myself that sometimes the tide is in, sometimes the tide is out. Hang on. The tide will come back in, your love will be restored/renewed. After 28 years, you know that, even if you can't always feel it.
    Yes. Let him work it out. Which is possibly the hardest thing you could do.

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  2. This post has an uncomfortable resonance for me at the moment. Every word. And Ms Moon's tide analogy is spot on. We know. For me the knowing just makes it even more difficult. Here we go again?
    Aren't we passed this part yet? It is emotionally exhausting.
    love and hugs to you.
    always.

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  3. Thank you ((((Thank You)))) your honesty here this morning brought me to my knees. I usually feel so alone. Now today I don't.
    Love
    Rebecca

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  4. Do not panic. Everyone needs a bit of space now and then.

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  5. I love all these comments and want to add one more: Marriage is for the birds sometimes -- perhaps most of the time. Except when it isn't.

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  6. These words are flying off the page! In my marriage, we can be so sensitive to one another's moods and of course we both assume that the other is upset with us, when most of the time the truth is that the other is just upset. Then we just exacerbate one another's moodiness. This post is so wonderfully honest. I second Radish King. Now we all feel a bit less alone

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  7. Wow I am just catching up on reading your posts. This one in particular really hit home for me. This is one of the things in fact I was talking to my therapist about today. I so quickly assume responsibility of my husband's mood. That it is something I did that is the reason for his poor mood. Like Ms. Moon put it. Sometimes people are upset and it has nothing to do with you. Thank you for your honest words here. It reminds me that we are not alone with these feelings.

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