Category Archives: Better Half

She wants him to leave for work early on her week­days off.  After all, she spends her whole week­end day off with him or him and his fam­ily, every wak­ing moment, prac­ti­cally.  Isn’t it fair that she should have some time to her­self?  Except she misses him when he’s not there—thinks about him, calls him just to say that she loves him, even as she yearns for infi­nite amounts of time to herself.

She wants him to do more around the house.  Clean the bath­room more (she hates clean­ing the bath­room).  Swif­fer some­times, do the dishes more often, some­thing beyond the twice-a-year mildew scrub­bing at the bath­room walls because the fan isn’t strong.  (It’s bull, she tells her­self at the same time.  He’s swif­fered, and he washes the tow­els and sheets more often than she does.)  After all, she buys the gro­ceries, does all the cook­ing for din­ner.  That she likes cook­ing, loves that he (and his fam­ily and her fam­ily and their friends) loves what she cooks– they each take care of their own laundry—that they make their own break­fasts and lunches (he doesn’t like left­overs at lunch ‚he wants a sand­wich, an insis­tence she thinks is pecu­liar)– some­how doesn’t count.  If she’s lousy her­self at open­ing the bills, avoids pick­ing up the phone when the caller I.D. says it’s some­one she doesn’t want to talk to right now (not that she doesn’t love them, although some­times she doesn’t, it’s just that mostly she’s tired), well, she still dusts more often, still wipes down the sink and the stove and the back of the toi­let and cleans out the fridge (which she fills, by the way—did she tell you that yet?).

She wants to be let alone when she first gets home from work.  She’s tired—been talk­ing to peo­ple all day, pay­ing atten­tion, meet­ing their needs.  She wants to veg—with a book, on the inter­net, have con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple whose claims on her are less than her fam­ily, than cus­tomers, than the man she loves and is mar­ried to—she wants not to have to pro­duce or per­form.  It’s unrea­son­able for him to expect con­ver­sa­tion, enter­tain­ment, inter­ac­tion, until she’s ready again—except some­times that’s a mat­ter of months, not min­utes or hours.  (That’s unrea­son­able, too, she would admit.)  And it’s not a constant—she has the need to be needed, too.  She needs to please, to cre­ate laugh­ter, to fill bel­lies and make peo­ple smile or impress them with the things that she knows.  And if she doesn’t always just come out and say what she needs—ask for the things that she wants—expects the poor only humans who love her to some­how read her mind—well, is she really sur­prised to be dis­ap­pointed?  (Some­times she says what she wants– or thinks she does– on her blog.  It’s eas­ier than a real conversation.)

She always under­stands and often sup­presses as use­less because it’s noth­ing she can change (seren­ity may be a goal but it’s elu­sive and illu­sive as hell), the real­iza­tion that much of this is all about work­ing and hav­ing to work—about being taken care of rather than being the one mak­ing the effort—all that for­ma­tive trauma shit that she has to let go of if she’s going to move on.  If she didn’t have to—if they had all the money in the world—if—if—if.  There’s a world’s worth of if’s, in the end, and she’s not—quite—ready to let go of her hurt, whether the peo­ple who hurt her meant it or not.  (She’s get­ting old enough to see that mostly, they didn’t, and she doesn’t like that at all.)  It’s two sides of a coin, light and dark, up and down, much like her mood states, the defin­i­tive irony.  She’s wistful—angry—lonely—happy– in love– and she’s utterly, nat­u­rally contrary.

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Started a new mood sta­bi­lizer last night, topa­max this time.  We shall see how it goes.