I am beginning to think that this is what I will look like by the time we make it to October. I am worrying myself old! And not in the good or wise or well earned old way. I am just becoming pessimistic and cranky. Just ask my husband!
I was doing really well with all of this stuff up until about yesterday. My patience had been wearing just a tad thin. I found myself happily playing along with the Hubbs' "Ahw babe I'm so tired give me ten more minutes" routine one second and twenty minutes later seething with resentment that I was trying to wake him AGAIN. I am finding myself at shorter and shorter ropes with nebulous time lines and ambiguous deadlines. This is certainly not the Hubbs' fault. Not all of it anyway. Yes, he could decide that my sanity is a teeny bit more of a priority and just suck it up and wake up when he says he's going to. I KNOW how exhausting the half sleep of duty is. Sorry babe but I don't care. I am out there doing it too and I feel it in my bones too. The shitty part is that there is no one to take up the slack for either of us when it comes to shit getting packed, sorted, cleaned. It is either you or it is me. Every day you say you are going to get up and get something done and then decide to sleep in feels like you are saying "Meh, it's not that important after all. Someone else will do it." It's like pouring gasoline on my already, nearly constantly smouldering fire of overwhelmedness and exhaustion. I know but cannot fully comprehend the stress of being the financial 'only' right now. I am sure it puts it's own gut knotting stress on top of the oh, so relaxing act of moving and wedding planning. I KNOW....the thing is that I am drowning. I see all of the shit that needs to be done and all of the shit that is past due. I am tired of being the one who is "on top" of everything, the one who makes sure that things keep rolling. I want help. UNCLE. As sweet as the little sis is I don't want her help I want HIS help. I want to be important enough to him to inspire him to overcome his aversion to taking part of the helm when things get shitty and confusing. I don't love that we have fallen into the habit of me being the only list maker and timeline writer. I want more partnership than that. I want him to get engaged in "making it happen". If he is reading this he is upset with me by now. He is thinking that I am being demanding and overbearing and that I don't get what it is like in his head at ALL! He's right. I don't. Partly because he doesn't tell me. I think he doesn't tell me because he doesn't want to worry me and he is right. It worries me to no end when he tells me all of the things he is afraid of and I am shitty at listening to it.
I think this is my "Wife Work" right now. Just what I needed right? More homework! But this is important shit right here. This is THE stuff our lives together depends upon me mastering. I need to listen without absorbing the awfulness of worry. I have enough worry for both of us and I can learn to just hear his concerns without internalizing it all. I am not entirely sure how I will do this but I think that's what the next fifty years are for. I hope it doesn't take all fifty.
Anyway, the other side of all of this is how well I have been doing. I made it well past a month before losing my shit and then really only lost it after getting the crap news that we no longer had a solid closing date. I feel more and more committed to my life with G and here in the city. I am feeling more and more excited about joining the ranks of the midnight superheros who stand watch so everyone might sleep. I am struggling more days than not right now. I mean really struggling. I miss my folks and I miss summers on the boats and everything seemed simpler. It is hard to keep my forward momentum in the relative moments of day to day. In spite of all of that I have a more absolute sense of peace on it's way. My dear friend S pointed out to me yesterday that I only have to survive 63 more days and then it is all done. I will look around and see my lovely little house, my diploma on the wall, the wedding flowers drying in the window and my warm, wonderful, infinitely supportive husband by my side. I will work hard right up to the end and I will get to look back and feel pride in my efforts and joy, knowing all of this bullshit and indigestion was worth it. In the mean time....I need to keep my mouth shut, practice taking deep cleansing breaths, work hard at interning, eat well, run often and further and further and kiss my Hubbs. We will work out the partnership divide when the dust settles and we can talk without such high risk of hurt feelings. We will take our notes from this war and craft a better battle plan for the next such challenge....Yesterday as I sat at the table crying into a box of packed up dry goods I begged for a promise...."Promise me we will never try to do everything all at once, ever again?!"...He said "Yes honey, next time someone is trying to finish school and we are having a housing transition I am sure we will only have one or two kids and you'll just be pregnant so, yeah, that will be way easier..." He has a point. While I hope to not repeat this cycle of intensity often if ever again, life does not slow down much from here on...at least not for a while. Not until my hair is the color of that woman's and my eyes as wise as hers....like I said, that is what the next fifty years are for.
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