“Mama, won't you nurse me?
Rain me down the sweet milk of your kindness.
Mama, it's getting worse for me.
Won't you please make me warm and mindless?”
That is a quote from Harry Chapins Sniper.
The bold statement is what myself said to I this morning.
I feel it getting worse for me.
Yesterday just a little
Yesterday a little moreso after we tried to ignore that she was naked and I was here
And waking this morning was much worse.
I play hopeful scenarios out in my mind
And they don’t last.
They come up against who she is, what she does, how she controls, how she manipulates.
Her negatives are fast outgrowing her positives these days.
We have been married 5 years June 6.
I had a list.
37 things I liked about her.
5 or 6 I didn’t.
Narcissism was not on the short list.
Today the 37 almost pale by comparison.
I thought I knew what I was getting away from with my first divorce, after 22 yrs of marriage.
My new friend did not exhibit ANY of the traits I was trading up from.
The temper I thought would diminish over time—(it has)
The fibro I thought would dissolve as old memories from two abusive families would be replaced with new memories of living with me—(guess it doesn’t work that way)
One of the 37 was I liked how she speaks. I just didn’t realize that her words were chosen to perpetuate her story “I am a most perfect person who has been terribly abused by my ex and a little by my parents.” Now I don’t like talking with her because I am on guard for the con slipped in, the false claim, the bluster, the distraction, diversion, denial, even the occasional put down.
I used to like it when our bodies came together. Now they come together only if she agrees after I ask and prime the pump. And then the flow of energy, of emotion, is only in one direction, out of me and into her. She does not reciprocate. It has to be leading so she can control the event.
She calls this managing her emotions. I think it blocking them, preventing them from flowering. But she is great at achieving chores on her list.
Enough about her.
These past few years I have been sad, disoriented, depressed an increasing amount of time. Used to be a Jan-Feb condition. This year it broke in April or May. I feel it starting again now. And I am taking Vitamin D3. And am out in the sun A LOT.
My feeling of depression is a response to the idea that I am not happy and powerless to change it in the given circumstances.
I know that the change is up to me.
I think the change needed is so painful, dislodging that I want someone else to make it happen.
And as long as I wait, it’s going to get much worse for me.
Or I can ignore my feelings, my more basic needs, and dance along in the outer layer with her, praising her every breath, agreeing to her every request, asking the questions she tells me to ask, saying the things she wants me to say, never doubting that she is right, or great, or the best cook in the world, or the best nurse since Clara Barton, acting happy to see her when she wants me to and finding something else to do when she does not.
Parts of the alternative sound a little like what I promised in my wedding vows. On the surface.
But the fact is, through five years of not feeling the love coming back my way, it is not flowing out to her as much as it had.
It feels like it is getting bottlenecked inside me--maybe that is the lump in the throat, the boil in the stomach-trapped love, unable to be expressed.
So, I think I need some help here.
