Stephanie Says.. Take a walk inside my head

July 20, 2017

Twenty Years

Filed under: Marriage — srose @ 3:24 pm

It’s not been easy. It’s not easy now.
It hurts.
It jars.
It doesn’t always fit.
And I’m not always sure.
At all.

But we’re here.

Fifteen years ago, we didn’t think we would be.
Ten years ago, we were convinced that we wouldn’t make it.
Five years ago, there was still so very much rain.
And now?

Now?
Now there are still days when I’d rather go into my room and pull the covers over my head rather than talk to anyone at all, including he whom I love.
But the storms aren’t always there.
Not always.
Not anymore.

See, we didn’t begin with love. We didn’t even marry for love. Many people don’t know that. Many people don’t remember that minutes before our ceremony, I warned him to run, to leave, to get out. With all the arrogance and selfishness of my twenty three years, I told him that I would be nothing but trouble. I told him that I didn’t love him then and probably never would. I told him that life hurt too much, that I was marrying him for escape, that I was using him and would continue to do so.

And then I cried.

He didn’t run. He didn’t flee. He didn’t even argue. He just held me. He told me that he had love enough for both of us. He rubbed his hands up and down my back and told me that it would be okay. He assured me that I may not love him YET, but some day I WOULD.

He told me he’d hang on.
That some day, some way
I’d fall in love.

He told me that he’d hang on.
Hang on.
Hang on.
He told me that he’d hang on because it was coming.

He was right.

It didn’t happen all at once, of course.
There was no pronouncement.
There were no fireworks. There were no trumpets.
Birds didn’t circle around my head and my heart didn’t beat faster when I saw him.
But he was right.

Slowly,
slowly,
Oh so very slowly
twenty three gave way to twenty five,
Twenty five gave way to thirty.
And then, a year later, the year I was thirty one, he became co owner of a shop and I became
not just his wife,
but his employee.
And the ice began to crack.

Then, six years ago or so, I was hit by a car. I couldn’t use my hands much, my hair was a mess and Kenny put my the whole thing into his first ever ponytail. It was awkward and sweet and reassured me that I was not alone.
And the ice began to crack even more.

A couple of years after that, other people were asked to teach “my children” at church.
I couldn’t foresee how much this would break my heart, but
Kenny did.
He knew that those preschoolers were part of my identity.
He knew how much it would continue to bruise.

I’ll never know how many conversations he initiated, nor will I know how many members he questioned.
I DO know that he did so.
He’s not a kid person.
He doesn’t care who instructs them, just as long as someone DOES.
He is, however, a ME person.

He loves me.
He loved me
and I was crumbling.
For a long time,
I was crumbling.

He couldn’t fix it, but he tried.
Quietly.
It was someone else who told me what he had done.
And the ice not only cracked. On that day, for that moment,
it began to melt.

It began
It began
It began
To melt.

And I began to see him as a gift.

I began to see him as the man that God had put in front of me.
To spend a life with.

And I thought that maybe
maybe
just maybe
it didn’t have to hurt
so much
Anymore.

And then
And then
And then
And then
came my diagnosis.

She looked at me and told me that I was
That I was
That I am mentally ill.

I am mentally ill.
I am mentally ill.

That
I will always be mentally ill.
Forever.

And this
What she said
Began to affect him too.

I am bi polar.
I will be forever.

I will forget.
He.
He will remember.

I forget.
I forget.
I forget so much.

I live inside my head.
I forget anything outside of my room.
I forget myself
I forget him

I cycle up.
I cycle down.
I cycle down.
I cycle down.
I cycle down.

This last year, I cycled down.

Very down.

I didn’t really leave the house for at least six months.
I forgot everything but my bed, my cat and my tears.

I forgot that it would be hard on him.

It was hard on him.
It WAS hard on him.

He faced the world alone.

But he had taken a vow.
He had made an oath.
He had sworn.

I forgot.
I forget.
I had forgotten.
He had not.

My counselor
She reminded him
Of what he already knew.
She reminded him to remember.
Even when I forget.

They both knew that I would forget.

Form a team, she told us.
She needs a team, she told us.

She’ll always be ill, she told us.
She’ll always need care.

My husband is not emotional.
He’s the Spock to my Scarlett.
The Head to my Heart.
But he loves me.

He may not understand being part of my team,
but he accepts the responsibilities.
Even with his million jobs
And twenty hour days.
He remembers.
He accepts.

He lifts me out of my chair when I haven’t showered.
He carries me to the water.

He tries to fix it when I’m hurt.
He wants to know what happened.

He puts up my hair when I can’t move.
He tucks me into bed when I can’t think.

He comes to my room and hands me food
when I haven’t eaten all day.

He remembers when I forget.
He loves when I do not.

He cares
He cares when I can’t.

It still hurts, of course.

Twenty years hasn’t taken away ALL of the heartache.

There are dreams that will never mature.

There are needs that will never be fulfilled.

There are children that will never be born.

Trips that will never be taken.
Stories that will never be written.
Words that will never be spoken

and
Sights that will never be seen.
There are things
that twenty three year old me
Could never have imagined.

Times
that twenty three year old me
could have never believed.

I’ll test him.
I’ll hurt him.
I’ll forget to remember.

But he won’t.
Twenty years on
and he won’t.

I have enough love for both of us, he said.
He was not lying

He told me that he’d love for me until I could love for myself.
He knew it would come.
I’m still learning how.

Twenty years on.
I keep forgetting.

Twenty three forgot

Twenty five forgot

Thirty forgot

Through dreams

And realities

Through hurts inflicted
And scars raised

Through battles lost
and won

I keep forgetting
I keep forgetting
I will always keep forgetting.

But not him.
Not him.

Never
Never
Him.

Twenty years on.
And he
He
He
Will remember.

And I
I
I will will be saved
over and over
because he does.

Because he does.

Because he never forgets

Because twenty years on
Twenty years on
Twenty years on
He still loves me.

Twenty years on

He was right
And he never forgets
He never forgets
He never forgets
To remember.

September 30, 2015

Come early morning (from Facebook)

Filed under: Marriage — srose @ 4:16 am

Kenneth Sims and I​ had a good talk tonight. He wasn’t happy because it was after midnight and he was sleepy. I wasn’t happy because we speak a different language and many of my analogies were falling….very very…pancake like (flat). But we discussed some goals and some yearnings and some strivings and some wishes. We’re not all fixed up/stitched up/skipping off hand in hand, but I got to express some things and so did he. The last few years have been hard. Thanks for loving us. Thanks for pulling for us. There are hurts. There are opinions and there are downright nastinesses, but I can be stubborn. And I’m as convinced now as I was then that God plunked this man right down in front of me to be in my life. Sometimes I don’t know WHY and sometimes I don’t know HOW we’re ever gonna make it through (it’s like seriously, dude??? SERIOUSLY?). And yes, I tell people I married him because he’s the first person who ever asked me, but that unshakable little CERTAINTY in my head, that THIS…THIS is my life…THIS is my town…THIS is my marriage…is there. It’s crazy. It’s mismatched. And sometimes it’s for the wrongest of reasons, but it is. He’s never gonna understand my emotions. I’m never going to understand his drive. And we’re never going to be one of those easy, fit together like puzzle pieces, hand in glove, Sunday drive kind of couples, but IT IS. It is hard. It is fighting. It is hurt silences. It is broken dreams. It is heartbreaking honesty. It is tears. It is neither of us winning. It is no one understanding. It is waiting for apologies that never come. It is working at cross purposes. It is tears and silences and spaces. But it’s also tonight. It’s also goals. It’s also thoughts. It’s also whispered wishes. It’s OH! I can do that! It’s openness and honesty and I’m afraid and you don’t have to be and not really knowing what’s going to happen but knowing that happen it will.
We don’t make sense. We know that. We don’t make sense to us either. And these past few years have been tough. They are going to get tougher. We know that too. And you, you looking at us, shaking your heads wondering how ON EARTH we ever got together are not going to understand. We don’t understand ourselves. But you know what? We don’t have to. Right now, we’re not looking for answers. Right now, we’re holding on. Right now we’re dug in. Right now we’re stubbornly tied in tight. You don’t understand. We don’t understand. And maybe we never will. But we’re here. Somehow, someway, we’re still here. It’s been hard. There have been tears and fears and fights and sleepless nights. But not this time. Not this early morning. This early morning, your prayers broke though. This early morning we actually talked. It’s not all okay. It’s not all settled. There are no neat little bows tying everything up. But things were said. And steps…halting steps…were taken. And we’re still here. And this time…this one time…right now…neither of us will go to sleep in tears.

October 11, 2014

I Can’t Really Fully Explain It, But Here Is Where I Try

Filed under: Family,Glimpses of Me,Marriage — srose @ 9:53 pm

I grew up a very romantic little girl. I dreamed of knights and castles and eternal love proclaimed by jousting tournaments and royal decrees. My heroes were Lancelot and Rhett Butler and Captain Von Trapp as portrayed by Christopher Plummer. Love, to me, was Marion the Librarian singing “’Til There Was You”, Prince Charming carrying a slipper made of glass around an entire kingdom or Johnny Castle taking Baby out of her corner and teaching her to do the Lift.
I had little experience with love’s realities. Even my biggest high school romance had something of the cinematic surrounding it. I was young. I was dramatic. And really? I knew nothing much at all.

It’s been over twenty years and quite a few transformations since then and those who love me most are STILL telling me that I have much to learn.

They have questions.
They are worried.
They do not, they tell me, understand.
How, they ask from all corners of this country, could I be here in this town, living this life, with this man?

See, they remember. They remember when my idea of love was someone so valiant that it seemed I was looking for a demi god. They remember the books I was always reading, the poems I was always writing and the dreams I had for my future.

It didn’t quite work out like I planned. I’m not beautiful or glamorous. I don’t have epic adventures. I’m not admired by all and sundry and, as it turns out, I’ll never be a mother.

And my friends worry.
In their concern, they ask me questions.

How?
Why?
Do you really think you’re ever going to be happy this way?

They question my relationships, my choices. They tell me something’s not right.

And more than once, someone has told me that God wants me to be happy.

I’ve tried.

Believe me. I’ve lined up every little tool I have in my bag of Church Kid tricks and I’ve tried to believe that this is true. I’ve tried to justify the things I think I want by telling myself that the One who Created me is Kind and Loving and Cares about my bliss.

But…

I can’t do it. I just can’t do it.

Don’t get me wrong. The God in which I believe doesn’t want me to be miserable. I’m not saying that life is made for drudgery and merely getting by.
I’m just saying that what we think of as happiness probably isn’t really the point of it all.

For example, I am sometimes tempted to ask my friends what would happen if my happiness derived from the cooking and eating of one of them. Would God then provide me with a big pot as well as all the seasonings and salts my taste buds required? Of course not. Some things are just wrong and we can’t expect God to just hand us over to them, even if they do provide us enjoyment.

My friends aren’t idiots. They know this.

It’s just that my friends can be very much like I am. We want concrete answers. We want resolved plots. We want neatly wrapped up chapters and it hurts when one of us is going through some kind of ambiguous limbo that seems to have no easy resolution.

Right now, of course, I’m the one dealing with the confusion. I’m the one experiencing the uncertainty. And in the absence of physical comfort, my friends offer me their words.
The problem, however, is that no amount of advice, however well meant, can really touch the core of this undertaking. Life in this little town, the manner in which I conduct my part of my marriage, the manifestation of my particular broken heart…all of these cannot be lived or honestly felt by anyone else but me.

I try. I do try to explain WHY I’m making the choices that I make and WHY I’m doing the things that I do, but I don’t think my words amount to anything more than noise most of the time.

See, my Kenny is many things, but romantic is not one of them. He isn’t anything like a knight, he’ll never feel for me the way Rhett did for his Scarlett and should he ever try to dance with me at a dinner, I would probably fall over on the spot.

It’s okay. I knew that he didn’t subscribe to such theatrical concepts when I married him. What I DIDN’T know was just how wide the gap between my dreaminess and his practicality would grow.

Because it has. Grown, I mean.

Over the years, my Mister has gotten more curt, more brusque. He has less time for anything not having to do with work or taxes or what must be done over the next time our office is open. Unfortunately, that “anything” often includes me.

I’m not the only one, I know. Kenny tells me stories of his aunts. Strong women they were. Independent too. Though married, they often lived and worked in different cities than their spouses, only living as a couple on the weekends.

Me? As you may have guessed by now, I’m NOT strong. I’m NOT independent. I can do wonderful things in my “me time”, but I will never truly be a Sims, sending my life’s partner off on a train, knowing I wouldn’t see him again for a work week or more.

I know. I know. Compared to military wives or women married to men who run companies and help rule the world, I do not have it hard at all. I’m not a woman in an impoverished region with a husband who was killed for being the wrong race or religion and children taken away to be turned into soldiers hardened much too young.

Believe me. I know I have it easy. I’m in the United States. I have the freedom to worship where I wish, or not to worship at all if that was what I choose. I have a computer that, while acting like a cranky, complaining old woman, still allows me to talk to the people I love who are scattered all over the world. I take shameless advantage of the fact that my boss is also my husband and I can do or not do many things according to my whims.

I’m blessed. I know this. This richness begins to slip through my fingers like an overabundance of coins every time someone raises the possibility of my pursuing someone else or chasing something new.

It’s not as if I haven’t thought of it myself. Believe me; in my daydreams I lead a hundred different lives a minute. It’s just…
What my friends don’t seem to understand is that leaving this man isn’t just leaving this man. It’s leaving a world, a life, an entire existence.

They tell me I’ll be better off.

They tell me that I’ll finally have a chance to be loved the way I need to be.

They tell me that with someone else, I could have what I want most, a child of my very own.

They grow impatient with me when I cannot intelligently reply. Logic, coherence, the simple stringing of words together…these have never been my strong suit.
If I could, I’d tell them of my guilt. I’d tell them of the girl that I was raised to be, the one who doesn’t leave, ever. Even with a broken heart. They know, of course. They blame it on a religion, a denomination, an upbringing. They even blame it on the interpretation of the Scriptures which I have been taught since infancy.

They tell me to think for myself. They tell me to form my own opinions. Their concern makes them more harsh, perhaps, than they mean to be, yet I still question it. If I were to leave this life just because I am being urged to, would that not make me be doing the same thing that they are accusing me of doing now? Blindly obeying someone without independent thought? I want to say this sometimes, but I don’t. I know how frustrating my Laura Petrie, fifties housewife demeanor can be to those raised in the post seventies demands for authority and equality. I know I’m an anomaly amongst my group. Even WERE I to begin some kind of breakaway journey, I still would not be understood. So I thank them for their advice. And I try to remember that their lives, their choices are not mine.

They can never, for example, call themselves princesses without meaning it sardonically. They do not understand the extent of the protective bubble that has been wrapped around me. They know I do not drive. What they do not know is how afraid I am to attempt most ANYTHING that is out of my ken. I can help breakdown something by Frost or Browning for you more easily than I can cook you a dinner. I am not helpless (as is pointed out to me with increasing frequency), but age does not equal experience, at least in my case.

See, were I to go, there would be much about me akin to a baby bird falling out of a nest. I am not someone to whom calm is an emotion easily achieved and panic would be my ruler for a very long time.

As I said, leaving this man means leaving a life. An existence. An entire ecosystem, if you will.

Our lives are twined together fairly well by now. To separate would mean losing my friends, my church, my job, my society. And forgive my skepticism, but much of me does not believe that the proffered help would actually appear.

And I do not care to be stranded.

You can GET another job, I have been told.
You can get another love.
You can get an apartment, a car, new friends.
You can even find a church, if that is what you care to do.

Really? Are you sure? Is what I want to reply. And yet I don’t. My friends are well aware of my fears. They know that telling me that someone, somewhere, even now is longing to love me, build a life with me and give me children is just going to provoke blank stares and disbelieving shakes of my head.

It’s true, my friends insist. There will be a job you love. There will be a car you can drive. And there will be a family. A real family, to give you the love you need.

See, that is a big word in our conversations. -Need-, I mean. It’s a word that cuts and hurts.

Because, you see, just as guilt is one of my struggles, just as trying to divide what is merely tradition and words of man from what is true and what I actually believe is something I’m currently burdened with, so to is the concept of want vs need.

The man I married, I am told, the man who is supposed to love me above all else, is not meeting my needs.
And yet. I am fed. I am employed. I have a roof over my head. I have more clothes than some people will see in a lifetime. There are days when I have ice cream running out of my nose and chocolate running out of my ears.

But, they ask me, don’t you want a real home? Don’t you want a place of safety, free from the ambiguity of your current arguments? Don’t you want a baby?
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Of course.

But there is that word again.

Want.

Just as what makes me happy changes from day to day (and sometimes minute to minute), so too does what I want. I can’t even decide what to watch on TV without flipping from show to show most nights. How then could I decide on a whole new life?

And whomever said that a baby was a NEED anyway?

There is fear, of course. Fear that no one will ever love me. Fear that my friends are wrong and that the man I am with is the only man who could exist with my moods and my variances and the sins that my mind constantly whispers that I commit over and over.

There is fear that the words are right and I AM a person incapable of the kind of love which I have begun to desire. There is fear that I will never be wrapped in someone’s arms as if I were the most precious thing in the world and that time will never be allowed to slip away as if there were no meetings to be attended, no ringing phone to answer.

There is fear that what he said standing in the kitchen is correct and that I AM too selfish, too given to my own whims and vagaries, too familiar with the emotions that drive me to my bed to ever lovingly raise a child. There is fear that I have become so driven by ego, so unaware of the thoughts and feelings of others that any mothering I attempted would be haphazard and neglectful at best and harsh and abusive at worst.

Besides, love, at least the kind of love which is often held out to me as being something which I could attain, is only a want. Do I not already have everything I truly need? And more?

It is not as if I have not been dissatisfied before. It is not as if my heart has not previously been broken. It has. And yet. Am I not still here? Will I not still be here should I make decisions that contradict my friends worried, yet well meaning advice?

They love me.
And I love them.

And yet.

They cannot hold my heart.
They cannot look at me as if I were the most precious woman in the world.
They cannot hold my hand and lead me to a new job, a new love, a new universe. They cannot even assure me that there IS a new job, a new love, a new universe.

Stop wanting guarantees, they tell me. Stop wanting to know where the road ends before you take the first step. Just…walk.
And yet.

I try. I love them.
They love me.
And I try to listen. I try to take their words to heart.
They see me hurting.
They see me feeling unwanted, undesirable, unloved.
And they want to help.
So they put on their thinking caps. They give me their best advice.
And they do not understand why I don’t take it.

They cannot understand. This is not their man. This is not their world.
I do not see myself as they see me.

They are not reminded, for example, that no matter how great the hurt between us, this is still my man. This will always be the man that God put in front of me that day in 1992 to be my husband. Kenny was in that place, at that time, to marry me.
No matter what happens, I will always believe that.

I am not saying, my friends tell me, that he doesn’t love you. I am not saying that he is not heaven sent. He just is unwilling or unable to love you THE WAY YOU NEED TO BE LOVED.

That phrase. That word.
Need.
Need. Need.
None of us, right now, are able to properly define it.
Even after endless nights
Of endless discussions
We still cannot tell you what it means.

He loves me.
He was sent to me.
We know that for right now, that is not enough.
We know that soon,
Decisions must be made.
But we cannot tell you what must happen.
We cannot tell you exactly
How to ease the sadness
How to dry the tears
How to let love in

Someone loves you, they tell me.
And yet, they don’t know that anymore than I do.
And they are not the ones living this life.

They can hold my hand.
They can lose sleep.
They can cry and pray and urge

But it’s not their bodies
Not their words
Not their man.

I’m hurting them.
I don’t mean to.
I’m hurting him.
I don’t mean to do that either.
It’s killing me in fact.

I do wish…with all my heart…
That I could see things his way.

That I could be all about the things that he is.

That I didn’t need to be taken in someone’s arms and rocked
Until I felt safe.
That I didn’t have so many fears that I literally pull the covers over my head
And weep
Until the storm passes.

I wish I could be as sure as my husband.
I wish I could be as wise as my friends.
But I’m not.

I’m full of doubt
And fear
And uncertainty
And a history
Of changing my mind.

So I don’t know much
Of what it is I want.

I do know that:
More than a baby,
I want love.
More than being a mother,
I want to be safe.
More than a family
I want to be someone’s only

I just don’t know why I can’t see it when he tells me I’m loved
I just don’t know why I can’t believe it.
It makes me feel awful.
Like maybe my fears are right and I don’t deserve happiness
Like maybe I’ve been so self centered over my lifetime
That I can have no more

So they give their advice
They tell me time is running out
They ask me why I’m not moving on

Toward love
Toward happiness
Toward a baby
And I cannot explain
I can tell them I’m afraid
Yet they do not understand why
I tell them I’m unsure
They ask me to take a leap of faith
I want to ask if it doesn’t take just as much faith to wait…to listen
But my friends are all about action
They want me to just do something

Well
I don’t know what I’m going to do any more than they
I may go crazy and refuse to speak anymore
I may dress in white and hand out flowers promoting peace
I may give myself to every man I see
I may become so immersed in prayer that I become no good for anything on earth at all
I may actually follow through with what I’m always saying and go around hitting people over the head
I just do not know

I know that I want love
I know that I want TO love
And I think that sometimes that love is not a Want, but is a Need
But I cannot tell you where to find it
I cannot tell you where I’ll look for it

My friends wonder, I know
I wonder too
And worry
And weep
And grieve

And yet I know that I love him
I just wish
I just wish
I just wish
The heart holding that love
Was able
To love him enough

October 7, 2014

N-O

Filed under: Glimpses of Me,kids,Marriage — srose @ 7:13 am

(Posted with The Mister’s “I don’t understand what you’re feeling but yes you can talk about it” permission. I do try to ask before I wall things…most of the time.)

Okay.
Here we go.
I can tell
By the looks
The questions
The hands on my shoulder
That you’re concerned.
You don’t understand what’s going on
And you don’t know why I’m not around anymore.
You’re worried.
You care.
But you don’t know how to ask about it.
Well…some of you anyway.
Some of you have your own lives
And may not have even noticed
That I’ve been gone.

Thank you.
I appreciate the sentiments.
I promise.
I promise.
I would explain it if I could.
But I’m not sure you would comprehend.
Heck.
I’m not sure -I- can comprehend.

You know he stood in the kitchen.
You know he told me no.
He had decided
That for us
As individuals
As people
As a pair
He had concluded
That babies
For us
Would be wrong.

Please
Hear what I’m trying to say
He doesn’t make decrees.
He’s not an all powerful voice from On High.
But when he decides, he decides.

It wasn’t the first decision he had made.
It won’t be the last.

I just didn’t know…
I had no idea
How deeply this one would cut.

It was everything I was waiting for
Everything I was breathing for
I had interests
I had loves
I had hobbies
But I was suspended
Still
Foot in the air
Ready to step off that curb

Babies
My very own babies

I can’t tell you
I can’t explain what that NO did to me

One word
Two letters

I thought it was just my heart that had shattered.
I didn’t realize until later that it was also everything else.

Everything
Everything I thought I was
Everything I believed
Everything I knew
Gone
Just…Gone

My worth.
My value.
My place.
My love.
My…everything.

I can’t explain it
Not really

And I’m not sure
Even if I could
You would really understand

I don’t.
I don’t understand.

I don’t understand why that word took everything away.
I’m not sure why
I am now questioning…All

You’re trying to help.
I know you are.
You hate seeing me so sad.
You tell me there are other things
Other paths
Other loves
Other lives

This.
This I know.

But I also know not yet.

See, I tried.
Yes….
Yes, I’ve always, always taken too easily to my sleep, to my emotions, to my tears.
You may not look at me any differently at all.

I am, you may say, still in bed.
Just, as you may say, I always am.

It is, you may say,
Nothing new.

My head, however?
My head would tell you it is not the same.
My heart would be too scarred to tell you
Much of anything at all.

I don’t know why.
I cannot put the reasons into words.

I had no child before.
I do not know why his choice made everything shift.
I just know it did.

You say you want my tears dried.
You say you want my happy back.
You say
That you want me to sparkle.

That, I cannot do.
Not yet.

I tried.
For the briefest of flickers, I did try.

But this one cuts too deep.
This one?
This one still bleeds and burns.

And leaving the house.
Being amidst anyone
Having to be anything but bruised?

Right now, I cannot do.

I’m not giving up.
Not all the way.

I’m not giving in.

But it’s a loss.
An unspoken, inexplicable, unintelligible loss.
That I myself do not comprehend yet.

I’m questioning everything…everything.
I appreciate your love.
I need your love.
I just can’t…I can’t

Sometimes
Right now
Trying to engage?
It’s just too hard.

I know.
It’s selfish
It’s egotistical

It’s not really a loss, is it?

I’ve never carried life, so there was no life to lose

I’ve never felt a spark, so there was no flame to extinguish

It cannot compare to any of your sufferings
It cannot compare to any of your griefs

It, in fact, is not even real.

And you tell me about your triumphs
You tell me of your strengths.

You want me to stand.

You want me upright

You want me back
In my place.

Two letters.
Two letters.
I should really be stronger
Braver
Better

Than two letters

Words have been my life
Words have always been my life

They should not diminish me now

Come, you say
Stand
Smile
Be
Do

All you need is to walk
Walk
Stand and walk

I will
The day is coming
When I will

But forgive me
Please
Extend your pardon

Right now
This moment?

The best I can do?
The only thing I can do

Is crawl.

May 17, 2014

This One

Filed under: Family,Glimpses of Me,Marriage — srose @ 1:17 am

This One. This Man. This Love of Mine.

I was fourteen the first time I fell in love. Ninth grade was a very heady time for me. We were reading –Romeo and Juliet- in English class. We were working on –West Side Story- in Musical Theatre. And I was chasing after someone who was chasing after my best friend. Soapy? Yes. Dramatic? Yes. But it fed right into my boy crazy, drama queen tendencies and helped pave the way for the rest of my overly emotional, “…but…but you just HAVE to love me forever and ever” adolescence and young adulthood. I came out of that year the star (at least in my mind) of my own little reality show. In truth, I was no more special or unique than any girl going through poutings and pangs, but I loved him. As much as a fourteen year old can love anyone, I loved him. And though it was one sided and I acted in ways that now cause my older, more experienced self much grief and embarrassment, we are currently friends of a sort. And every now and then I flash back to our lunch breaks and the way my classmates and I would giggle, believing that we knew, really knew about love.

The second time I fell that deeply came when I was seventeen and a senior. It, too, was (in its way) a heady, romantic year. In class, we were reading –The Once and Future King-. We were putting out a school newspaper. And, once again, I was chasing a boy, believing I knew everything there was to know about love. I didn’t, of course. I knew something of heartache, something of loss, something of packing up a life and moving from one country to another and back again. I knew something of the pressure a girl can put on herself when she is being schooled with bright, driven young men and women all looking beyond their own campus to future opportunities that would take them around the country and even, in some cases, around the world.

On the back side of Christmas Break, I learned something of what it meant when the boy you had been dreaming of, chasing after and journaling about looks at you one night and decides to kiss you. But still, though I was sure that the most romantic year I’d ever known just HAD to be a sign of something predestined, I knew nothing of love.

And now? Well, to be honest, I’m not so sure.

Indulge me for a minute, will you? Travel back in time with me to a place called 1992.

If you have read my previous entries, you will recognize that date.

1992:
The year I graduated high school and moved to yet another state…this time to Kentucky, where I still remain
The year both of my mother’s parents died, plunging my family into deep grief and an inability to help each other that lasted well beyond the twelve months of that particular calendar
The year I began college, introducing me to people who are now dear and trusted friends for whom I will be forever grateful
The year that someone decided to put his hands on me, causing a deep seated belief that I had literally lost my mind and could never trust my own instinct or judgment again

And, of course:
The year that seventeen year old Stephanie met a twenty eight year old man who is now her husband

It was not, in case you were wondering, love at first sight. I was still coming out of my Year of Beau, still dreaming of a combination Lancelot, Rhett Butler and Heathcliff. I was about to enter over a decade of believing myself hopeless, helpless and insane. He was in his third year of professoring and thought of me as “The New Minister at Church’s Little Daughter”.

Two years later, after Kenny had moved away to graduate school and I had begun a life of college during the week and my parents’ hometown on the off days, we were a couple. Some months after that, I was beginning another romantic senior year. This time, however, instead of being kissed and sent away by the boy I was chasing after, I was wearing an engagement ring and dreaming of dresses, flowers, vows and cake.

The problem, however, was that I still knew nothing of love. Because of this, I began a new life that was troubled almost from the moment Kenny and I began envisioning it.

See, here is something that most people do not know-or have forgotten: Kenny married for love. I did not.

Are you shocked? Do you think me some kind of manipulative user? Do you want to stand up for my man and call me a liar and a deceiver? It’s okay. That’s what I was…to a point.

Manipulative? Yes.

User? Yes.

Lover? Well, to answer that one, you’ll have to define “love” for me.

Did I love him? Yes. Yes, of course I did. Even as young as I was then, I knew that there-right there standing in front of me-was the man that God had put down into my world, my own personal little world, to marry. I knew him to be smart, and kind, and faithful and hard working and protective. And I knew that he loved me.

I, however? I was, in my own way, using the man.

See, with the grief over losing our loved ones and the confusion over moving from country to country only to discover that finding a place where we landed was not going to be very easy, came anger. My people are not quiet, like Kenny’s side is. We have feelings and we express them somewhat freely. We are tightly knit. We are bound together. But we are not afraid to emote. And we do a lot of it.

A year out of college, five years after my brain rolled out of my head and about twenty months into being engaged, I couldn’t take it anymore. I loved my family, but I couldn’t live in that world. Our hurts and hearts were colliding and no one was being healed. Enter my Mister.

I had had other options. My best friend’s cousin, for example, offered to set me up in a trailer, hunt me squirrels and give me many many babies. As my best friend’s cousin was barely of age and had never worked a day in his life-and I kinda wanted more than he was offering…oh, who am I kidding, I wanted a LOT more than he was offering- I hastily declined. (He was in prison and in between wives the last I heard, if any of my single friends want to follow up on THAT lead.)
Kenny, though? Kenny wanted to marry me. Kenny wanted to MARRY ME. Kenny STILL wanted to marry me after our wedding day talk in which I told him I didn’t and couldn’t love him and he replied that he was okay with that, that he had enough love for the both of us.

It was the perfect line. It could have been scripted, it was that romantic. And suddenly, there he was, my man, the spouter of perfect lines.

And we got married. And we had a blissful almost month long honeymoon in which the real world only intruded during infrequent phone calls “back home”. I was a princess. I was a Southern Belle. I was beautiful and charming and very very young.

And still, I knew nothing of love.

DID I love him, I can hear you asking. DO I love him now?

Well yes, yes, I do. And no, no, not in the way you mean.

I was nineteen when Kenny and I first began to be seen together. He taught me everything he could think of. He stood me over the sink and handed me peanut M and Ms one by one until I could swallow them whole. This was his way of combating my lifelong conviction that I just couldn’t and wouldn’t swallow pills. He had me practice pouring catsup until I could start my own portion and didn’t need to ask anyone else to do it for me.
I was in awe. He was smart. He was confident. He was capable. And I was very much in hero worship mode. True, he didn’t fill my car with roses like my brother did for HIS girlfriend. He didn’t plan scavenger hunts that ended in surprise picnics. But he loved me. He was the strength I ran to when my family was fighting again. He was the calming influence who almost singlehandedly planned and orchestrated our wedding because I was a blubbering mess through both the rehearsal and the ceremony. He introduced me to people like Styx and let me dance around his living room singing “Crystal Ba-a-a-ll”, not even minding that I was badly out of tune.

At twenty three and newly married, I was STILL in hero worship mode. The problem was, I was often in hero worship mode alone as Kenny was still working on his doctorate and teaching at two schools, trying to be a new husband AND caring for gravely ill parents. Several years ago, in one of our relatively drama free moments, we decided that if we had it to do over again, we probably (had we been thinking) would have waited AT LEAST until he had gotten his PhD and some of the pressure was not choking the life, and love, our of our brand new togetherness.

For it was. We were under tremendous pressure. I was isolated much of the time in a town where, though I had lived here for college, I really knew no one who had not graduated and moved on. Kenny was on the road in a ninety mile triangle trying to attend to teaching, his mother who was, it turned out, not going to live much past our honeymoon, and me. By the time he got to me, I was angry and bored. It was not an auspicious start.

Still, we thought, five years later after having attended funerals for at least ten close relatives and friends, including both of Kenny’s parents…still, we love each other. We have a new house to fill with memories. Surely we are past the worst of it.

And we were right. In a way, we were. What we didn’t count on was that little girls grow from twenty three to thirty in ways that men aging from thirty three to forty do not. Suddenly, the hero worship goggles began to chafe. Kenny and I began to fight over things we never thought we would…and believe me, our first five years were doozies. He had an office to escape to when things got bad. I had nowhere to go, nothing to do except pace the hallways growing madder and madder.

I loved him…at least, I thought I loved him. I couldn’t understand why things were getting so much harder. I was hurting. I was dying for some kind of change, but honestly? I didn’t see a way out.

The way out came, as ways out often do, in a most unexpected place. A tiny little town named LaFollette, Tennessee came calling at just the right time. Kenny had a friend who wanted to buy a small print shop and needed someone to partner with him. He thought that Kenny might be the right person for the job. He was right. Kenny IS the right person for the job. What none of us foresaw, however, was that in getting Kenny, the shop got me too. Suddenly, we had a common goal. We had something to strive for. We had a reason to work together. We were happier. We fought less. I had a reason to test out my latently developed grown up skills and Kenny was able to stretch and expand his abilities and creativity in ways he had not been doing as a man teaching about computers.
Still, even then, though I had learned more of love and the twists that lead off in unexpected ways, I did not fully know it.
I still do not know it.

Kenny and I, as you may have observed, are stretching once again. Once I hit thirty, once I was able to find counselors and companions whom I could fully trust, I slowly, very slowly, began to grow away from my husband. Some of this amuses him. Some of this, however, leads to conflict the likes of which I had thought we put away years ago
.
If you ask me, I’ll tell you that we fight over typical things:
He cannot, for example, seem to put his things away and implores me not to touch his office, for, though it is a junkpile to me, it is a finely organized mess to my husband and he has everything just where he wants it.

Or, take for example the way we communicate:
I like stories. I have a co worker with whom I frequently converse. It has literally taken three days before to reach a conclusion of one of my tales as I tend to meander off into stray paragraphs here or lost sentences there. Kenny? He believes in the fewer words, the better. Perhaps it is because he expends so much of his energy on his students, but, by the time he returns home to me, he doesn’t want to hear my chatter. I have literally had to tell him…please be quiet. You are NOT going to be interested in this, but you are the only person I have to talk to right now, so I’m telling it. I will let you know when I have made my point and you can talk again.

This is typical. There are often messy vs neat and quiet vs rambling people in relationships all around the world.

Some of what we fight over, is less typical but not unheard of. I was, as I have said, raised in a somewhat freer emotional state than my husband. We talk over each other. We cry. We tease. We laugh. We love. We hug. We like our puns and our inside jokes and we have been known to say “It’s a Hall thing. You wouldn’t understand.” Somewhere along the line, however, I absorbed into myself a need to be loved on. It wasn’t as if the people around me DIDN”T love me, it was just that I needed to be TOLD and SHOWN such.

My husband is not a shower. My husband is not a teller. He is not my father, bringing flowers and chocolates on both holidays and just because. He is not my brother, coming home to play with the children so that his weary wife could rest. My husband is an “I feed and clothe and shelter you. If I didn’t love you, you’d know it because you’d stop eating” kind of person.

So he loves me, yet we fight.

Again though, this is not unheard of. There is a whole series devoted to finding the way individuals both receive and express their loves to spouses and children and the world around them. Some hug. Some clean out garages. Some bring in just because bracelets and necklaces. My husband feeds me and keeps a roof over my head.

And yet.

And yet.

I am no longer twenty three sitting alone in a trailer on a hot summer day. I am no longer thirty standing at the door of our new shop helping my husband greet customers. I am four decades old. I am still trying to figure out this love thing.

Do I want to scream?

Sometimes.

When I think I’m trying to express why I’m hurting and how what he said made me feel yet he thinks I’m bringing up something from the past to punish him for a slip of the tongue that he can’t even remember?

Yes, I want to scream.

When I start to cry and he asks me what’s wrong only to hear the answer and turn away with a “Haven’t you gotten over that YET?”

I want to scream.

When I approach him for affection only to be told that, “kissing is stupid. Wouldn’t you rather have supper?” and “Of course I love you. What makes you think I don’t love you? I feed you, don’t I?”

I want to scream. And hit things.

When my friends say, “but you jump. You run. You are so friendly with people and like to talk. Your husband, however? He’s so…boring. Aren’t you bored?”
I want to scream at him to do something, not remembering that the twenty hours a day he works-the very things making him so sleepy at home- were part of what I considered pluses when I was younger and knowing deep down that I wanted someone faithful, someone people could trust.

So, do I love him?

Yes. And no.

It’s not a Guinevere kind of love. It’s not a Cinderella kind. It’s not the kind of love that my brother and sister in law have. Kenny and I aren’t romantic. We aren’t domestic. And I’m only a princess in my own mind.

Yet.

For every time he tells me that only stupid people watch the television shows that I do, only to not understand that saying that is to call ME stupid
There is the time that the heater went out during my shower and Kenny boiled water on the stove so that I would not be cold while rinsing the shampoo out of my hair. It was the –Out of Africa- moment I’d dreamed of and one of the sweetest, most perfect things anyone has ever done for me.

For every time I cannot make plans because we don’t know if one of the local funeral homes will need us to print cards or we don’t know if the machine will act up running a new order

There is the time that I stayed home from work in order to meet up with some of the girls and see a movie. When they couldn’t make it, Kenny drove back from Tennessee, took me by the hand and presented me with a date, even though he knew going in that it would be a movie he hated. He was right. It was. He took me anyway.

It’s not unusual, of course. Every couple has a story. Every story includes likes and dislikes, happy surprises and broken promises. Almost every couple goes into their relationship thinking that they know love, only to realize later that they really knew nothing at all.
Not every young bride grows up the way I did. Kenny was my twenties and soon will have been my thirties. Twenty years is a long time for a young woman. Even one who thought she knew of love.

What do I know for sure?

Not much, really.

I don’t know what is going to happen.

I don’t know if I will forever be sad over not having babies.

I don’t know if I will always be looking to my husband for affection he just cannot provide.

I don’t know how badly my heart will continue to break.

I don’t know if my melodrama will influence him any more than I know if his coolness will influence me.

And yet.

This is still the man who held me all those afternoons ago while I was crying.

This is still the man who told me he wanted to marry me no matter what.

This is still the man who said he had love enough for both of us.

This is the man I have used.

This is the man I have idolized.

This is the man I have learned from, the man I followed, the man I chose.

This is the man I have married.

This…this is the man I have loved.

Even though it is something of which I know
Not much.

Not much, it turns out,
At all.

April 6, 2014

Just…No More

Filed under: Glimpses of Me,kids,Marriage — srose @ 5:52 am

He stood in the kitchen the other day and announced that he had been thinking.

We’d been talking about it for a while, but this time he had come to a conclusion.

“No more”, he had decided.

No more dreaming.

No more thinking.

No more making plans.

No more visions of a little girl with my fair skin and her father’s dark hair.

No more handling of little lacy dresses and exclaiming over fancy, sparkling bows.

No more wishing.

No more hoping.

We would, he announced, not be having children.

Ever.

And my heart, which had, of course, been casually and carelessly broken before, caved in.

And I couldn’t breathe.

He was sorry, he said.  He knew that he hurt me.  He knew that he was crushing my dreams.

But he had made up his mind.

He was right.

He HAD hurt me.

He had broken my heart.

No.

No.  He had done much more than that.

He had shattered my world.

I came of age, of course, in the era of shoulder pads and power suits.

I knew that “Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves” and that “She Works Hard For the Money” long before I was even mature enough to parse those words.

I was always a throwback.  A Donna Reed.  A June Cleaver wanna be.

Not with the pearls, of course.

I can’t cook…er…I don’t.  I HAVE, but generally the kitchen is the Mister’s domain.

Generally all the grown up stuff, the driving, the taxes, the speaking to people in public is his domain too.

(He had already raised a child, people would say when they joked about me being so much younger than my husband.  Why would he want the responsibility of rearing another one?)

Well, as it turns out….

No.  That’s not fair.

He’s not the great villain in my life, now is he?

He knows I’m hurting.

He understands…well he mostly understands why it’s hard for me to go to work anymore since he is my boss.

He just doesn’t…

He can’t…

He will never…

Be empathetic.

To him, in his mind, we would make terrible parents.

We, at least HE, is on call all the time, for one thing.

The phone rings while we’re eating supper.

The phone rings while we’re in the car.

The phone rings while we’re at church.

He has even left the house before at one in the morning to drive down, set up, and print something that a funeral home needed for that/the next day.

He is a good man.

He wants to help.

He’s just so darn busy all the time.

But, I want to say…

So are doctors.  So are EMTs.  So are ministers and missionaries and counselors and professors and ANYBODY who works with the public, who is needed to help make the world a better place.

And they have children.

Ah.  Yes.  They do.

But THEY aren’t US.

He, with his self confidence and his need to be able to get things accomplished in HIS way in HIS time.  Don’t I recognize how frustrated he gets when he is in the middle of something and a student or customer comes in needing something?  Don’t I know that life with a child would be constant interruptions?

Don’t I think our poor little JJ would end up in therapy twenty years later because both of her parents had a strong, egocentric yen for taking the world and shaping it to fit themselves and their own needs?

“Selfishness” was the word he used.

We are so selfish…

We have tailored our world so well that we have stitched ourselves into it.

And any child who came along…

Anyone trying to find their own place

Would be ruined.

Ruined.

Not on purpose.

Just because we would be so unthinking…

So casual.

So selfish.

And with that phrase, my heart stopped beating.

See, the babies weren’t just hypothetical to me.

I could SEE them.

I can still see them.

Years,

Decades before I knew there was going to be a Kenny in my life,

There were my babies.

Jonathan Frederic

Jennifer Rose

Named after the glamorous “Hart” couple of 1980’s TV and both my mother AND father’s side of the family.

The day we moved into this house, I had a room picked out for a nursery.

And then…

And then came my husband’s job after job after job

And my breakdown.

I’m emotional.

He’s busy.

I battle depression.

He’s always at the office.

We hit a rough patch there…

And couldn’t stand to be around each other very much.

And then…

Then things got better.

We became a real team.

A real couple.

And I started dreaming again.

Until that night in the kitchen.

As you know,

I have always been Rachel, begging for children from her husband’s God.

I struggle.

I cry.

I remind God that I never WANTED a career.

Offices were not for me.

I did not major in Law, or Science, or Education…

Nothing that would put me in a classroom, or lab, or boardroom, or library.

I wanted to be someone’s Mommy.

No,

That’s not technically true…

I wanted to be THEIR Mommy.

My Jonathan

My Jennifer.

But he says no more.

No more.

Stop dreaming.

Stop begging.

Stop crying.

Look forward.

Move on.

“But you are so creative,” say the well meaning, but not entirely helpful people in my life who REALLY DO love me even if I do want to grab them and scream in their faces sometimes.

“You are so creative.  You’ve written stories and plays and when you were little you wrote songs and tiny books.  Be a writer.  Be a play write.  Let your work, let your volumes be your children.”

A valid choice, that is.

I’ve heard authors compare their books to their babies.  Some even say they cannot choose a favorite work, just as they cannot choose a favorite child.

But…they have a child.

Not words on paper, but a living, breathing little person whose hair they can touch and whose cheek they can kiss.

“Ah,” say the same people who were trying to offer encouragement with their last statements “You don’t understand what it is like.  You don’t have to deal with throw up or spiked fevers at two in the morning.  You don’t have to deal with water in baby’s ear because they went to the swimming pool.  There are no toys in your living room that should be in the play chest.  There are no stains on your best clothes.  In many ways, you are free.”

Thank you.

I will take these words to heart.

You do make me wonder why you even had a baby in the first place if you think they are that much trouble, but I appreciate your support.

“And you?” Some have asked, “Why do YOU want a baby so badly?”

They point out that I’m a self proclaimed princess.

I am a spoiled brat.

Much of my life is done for me and I don’t REALLY encounter anything hard.

“And having a child,” they remind me, “Is HARD.”

Yes.

I realize that.

But you yourself didn’t know how hard it would be before you had your child, now did you?

And, besides,

We live in first world countries in the twenty first century

Aren’t we ALL just a little bit spoiled?

But I don’t say this.

I don’t say any of it.

I myself don’t know what to say to my lovies whey THEY are going through hard times.  I know that people love me and aren’t really thinking about what they are saying either.

And yet…

If one more person tells me that this is something every woman goes through?

I seriously might just lose it.

REALLY?

I want to say

EVERY woman stands in the kitchen and listens as her husband rips out her still beating heart?

EVERY woman despises Mother’s Day so much that she wishes it can be erased from the calender?  ‘

And don’t even get me started on those “And to all the women who are aunts or have worked with children, we thank you too” tags… It’s a sop, a concession and we all know it.

EVERY woman has to listen to her husband explain that he doesn’t think she’ll be a good mother because she misses so much church and loves her bed more than she loves most people?

I get it.

I mean, I do but I don’t.

I’m sorry.  For those of you who have lost babies (and I know you are out there), I’m sorry.  I cannot imagine your pain.  If I could throw my arms around you and somehow lesson your grief, I would.

For those of you who have struggled through years of infertility and all the stigmas and gossip and expensive treatments that entails, I’m sorry.  I can’t imagine your pain either.  I cannot.  I’m sorry we live in a world that pays for birth control and sex aids but does not help those who want to expand their family.

I’m sorry for the stupid things people say.

I’m sorry for the way that your reputations changed when people found out you had some kind of hurt or obstacle in your life.

I’m sorry for the friends you may have lost, the people who stayed away.

I really am.

I’m sorry I cannot give you any comfort.

And I’m sorry I cannot take any comfort from you.

I’m sorry that my broken heart and mind cannot see your proffers of solace as anything but stupidity.

No, I’ve never lost a baby.

No, I’ve never had injections.

No, I do not know if God is directing me to better things.

In all honesty, I have no idea what (besides the grief that I feel) is going on in and around Stephanie Land.

I’ve never been pregnant.

I’ve never tried to be.

The Mister never thought it was time.

Until it was…

Or so I believed.

We started making plans.

After fifteen years, there were finally a few discussions.

A few glimpses.

A few flutterings

Of hope.

Tiny little girl child, I thought…

Black hair like her Daddy

Fair skin like me

Our very own Snow White

She was there

She was real

I could see her

I could

Until the man I married

The man I was daily building a life with

The man I thought would make our family

Took her away

Now I’m not an outwardly introspective person

I talk to myself, to my cat, to the heavens

When I am in bed

I try to figure myself

My world

My existance

Out

But mostly, in public, I act on feeling

So I’ve never actually discussed WHY I wanted a child

It was just something that was known

Stephanie wears glasses

Stephanie has freckles

Stephanie wants to be a Mama

Stephanie did

Stephanie DOES

And Stephanie doesn’t know how to feel

Anymore

“Let Go.” I’ve been told.  “Let God.”

“Nothing can touch us that hasn’t been sifted already through His fingers of love”

“He will direct your paths”

“Turn it over to Him”

I used to be one of those people

Minister’s daughter

Hymn Singer

Bible Drill Queen

Sunday School Student with her hand up in the air

Miss Know it All

And then Life Happened

And Miss Know it All discovered that she didn’t really know very much

And now I say that.

It’s hard.

It’s hard to be a Rachel in my world.

My world doesn’t like questions.

Or doubts.

Even my church…my  church as collective, I mean

Acts as if Jesus were the Magic Answer Giver

We all are supposed to be Hannah’s

Hurt but still praying

Crushed but still believing

Keeping her promises

Well,

I’ve never been Hannah

I wasn’t Hannah at twenty four and I’m not Hannah now

I’m crushed

I’m hurting

I can’t see how any of this is going to work out

At all

And “Let Go and Let God”  hurts

I’m sorry,

But when the person who is supposed to love you best and most over all the world

Takes your dearest and most cherished dream

Rips it out of your soul

And stops it to death before your eyes

“Let Go and Let God”  hurts ALOT

And what you discover

Is that work hurts too

And you don’t want to be anywhere near your husband

Especially when he is your boss

Yet,

Since it’s just the two of you,

Home seems like a cage

And,

Though you had been coming together

Working through things

Feeling like true partners

Your sadness enters before you do

And your husband escapes to his office as much as he can

Leaving you deserted and confused

At least FEELING deserted and confused

(He would be there.  You know he would be there.  But he hurt you.

And though

You want someone to love you

Truly love you

Through your pain

You aren’t sure if the person who caused it in the first place

Is really the right man for the job right now

Even if he IS the man who has been with you

All of your life.)

So you back away.

Sometimes flinching.

He says he’s sorry.

He says he knows.

He says it will pass.

EVERYBODY says it will pass.

“Dream a new dream”

“The best way to forget about your own need is to help someone else who is hurting more”

“Keep busy.  Don’t think about it.”

“Let Go and Let God.”

The Mister says I need to get up.

“You will feel so much better if you will just get up and go to work and church.”

I tell him I don’t miss as much as he thinks I do

And Yet

Church…

The place I’ve been since I was six weeks old

The place I went every time the doors were open

(And sometimes when they were not)

Church

Refuge

Sanctuary

Alter

Salvation

For so many?

I cannot face right now

It hurts too much

I couldn’t even BEGIN to tell you why

It’s something I don’t really understand myself

Maybe it’s because the hymns

My beloved hymns

Are ashes right now

In my mouth

Maybe it’s because if I hear one more “Praise the Lord”

I’m gonna scream

It’s hard to sit numb through the solos and sermons

I’m NOT okay

I’m really

Really

Not

I’d rather be home in tears

But we’re big on church in my family

And we go

When we can make ourselves get out of bed

When we can tell ourselves that we only have to be hypocrites for two hours and then we will be home again

I wonder

A lot

If I DIDN’T know the stories

Sing the songs

If I COULDN’T recite the verses

Would it be easier?

If I wasn’t a minister’s child

And married to a leader

Could I be more real?

Because all anyone wants to hear is “fine”

It’s not like I can EXPLAIN or anything

And one doesn’t stay home

With a broken heart

Not when one is…

Not when one…

Well sometimes it’s just easier to let him haul me out of my sleep and stick me in the shower

No matter how much

Being around the faithful

Hurts

No matter how much

I want to blame him

He’s not a bad guy

He’s not my Prince Charming

But he’s not some kind of Wicked Evil Spouse either

And I’m trying

Very carefully trying

Not to vilify him

And I’m trying

Very carefully trying

Not to run too far away from Jesus either

But home feels like a cage

And church feels like a prison

And I’m Old Testament enough

And Backwoods enough

And just plain HUMAN enough

To believe I’m being punished

To believe that I’m so hurtful

Or WAS so hurtful

At some time in the past

To someone else

And THEIR dream

That now is when mine

Will be taken away

Forever

And it’s just me

And the Mister

And the millions of helpful unhelpful comments

That people

(Some of whom don’t even really know what is happening)

Feel compelled to give

Because people are people

And people like normality

And right now

I am anything but

Even though

I know that I WILL be singing solos again someday

And not skipping Mother’s Day

Or having to stop teach the children

Or crying for days before a reunion

Because EVERYBODY in my family

Has a newborn in the same year

Except for me

Someday

This will either be TRULY okay

Or so status quo

That it feels normal

To be numb

But right now?

You know what?

It’s hard to be around people

And church

And work

And even the people I love

Because my husband

The person who is supposed to love me most and best

Stood in the kitchen one day

Reached into my heart

And ripped it out

And that?

Well that is going to take some time

To heal

If ever

It does

 

February 10, 2011

I’m more a Rachel than a Hannah, but I don’t want to be

Filed under: Marriage — srose @ 12:47 am

I was, let’s say, around six when the sweet little spy show -Hart to Hart- premiered. Being so young, I have no idea if I actually watched the Harts in the early ’80’s or just caught up with them in reruns but somehow, their jet setting attitude, fabulous adventures and beautiful lifestyle caught my attention. And their names.

Oh their names.

Jonathan Hart

Jennifer Hart

Hart to Hart

In my playtime, I was something exotic like Katerina or Mercedes (Mercedes Lane, to be exact), but when I planned out my life (and oh how I planned out my life), the names I always, always chose for my future children were theirs.

It was going to go like this: I was going to meet my future husband at eighteen

I was going to marry him at twenty

I was going to have my first child (a boy) at twenty two

My second child (a girl) would be born during my twenty fourth year

And then somewhere along the way, I would adopt boy/girl twins whom I didn’t bother to name because I figured they would already have some

I didn’t take into account any kind of education (very few people have graduated from any sort of higher learning by their twentieth year) or profession (I was going to be a stay at home mom) or the fact that I could not (and still can’t) cook or sew.

I didn’t take into account that my future husband might have other ideas, and he did. I met him at seventeen. I didn’t begin dating him until twenty. And he wouldn’t marry me until I was a graduate.

I didn’t take much of anything into account, to be honest. I was going to have -Pachabel’s Canon- in my wedding. I was going to have a cute little house with a nice yard out back. And I was going to have my Jonathan. And my Jennifer.

The music I got.  The house came a few years later.  The yard?  Well, out back is a steep bank that WOULD be a nice yard if it were flat, but there is a grassy area on either side should the desire to play ever overcome us.

Jonathan Frederic and Jennifer Rose?

Well, it’s like this: At first, our marriage was a disaster.  I am still very much a princess, but at twenty three I was nothing but a selfish, selfish…well, brat.  I didn’t want to be around my parents because they took away from my “Me and Kenny time”.  I didn’t wanna be around Kenny’s parents because his dad smoked and I would spend the first part of every week sick…and milking it.  Kenny was both taking and teaching classes and I spent a lot of time alone in our trailer, mad and bored.  I could have made cards for a nursing home.  I could have baked cookies for the Homeless Shelter.  I could have done a million things, but I was selfish and stupid.

And God, in his infinite wisdom, saw that me being a mother in my early twenties would have resulted in a screwed up me, a screwed up Kenny and a badly screwed up kid.

And there were no babies.

Then came the deaths.  His mother, my grandmother, great grandparents, aunts and uncles.  Our first five years were part confusion and grief and part wondering when the other shoe was going to drop.

And, mad as I was that I had no children, I can look back now and be grateful that there were no babies.

Today however?

There are still no babies.

Oh, don’t get me wrong.  There are babies.  There are the five most beautiful, adorable, talented kids in the world, but they are my brother’s, not mine.  There are the hugs I claim every Sunday from my “weren’t you little just a couple of weeks ago?/why are you growing up so fast?” two year old class, but they aren’t mine either.  Not really.

There is no Jonathan.

There is no Jennifer.

No little boy who is doomed to wear glasses because there is nearsightedness on both sides of the family.

No little girl with my songs and her father’s dark hair that curls the longer it gets.

I’m thirty six now.  Kenny’s a decade older.  We’re calmer.  We’re somewhat wiser.  We’re not as angry, not as crazy and much more in love.

But there are no babies.

And I want to be Hannah.  I want to be faithful in my belief.  I want to be persistent in my prayers.  I want to love God more than I desire a family.

I’m not Hannah, however.  I never have been.

I’m calmer.  I’m wiser.  I can see patterns emerging that I never thought I would.

But I’m still Rachel.  Remember Rachel?  Beautiful but childless?  Loved but barren?  Crazy jealous?

I’m not beautiful.  I have no idea if I’m barren.  But the crazy part?  The jealousy chapter?  I’m right there with her.

The screaming of “Give me children or I shall die”?  Been there.  Not to my husband, but to my God.

God who has blessed me with a man so much more faithful than I deserve, so much more wonderful than I could have planned for.

God who has given me children in class after class for so long that some of them are out of college now with marriages of their own.

God who has loved me through the crazies and the tears and the heartbreaks.

God

God knows I’m Rachel.

But he also knows my heart and how I long to be like Hannah.  Faithful, gentle, promise keeping Hannah.

He’s seen me through the past thirteen years of this mixed up marriage.  He’ll see me through the thirteen after that.  And the thirteen after that.

And He’ll hold me.  And He’ll love me.  And He’ll meet my needs.

Even if I never have my babies.

But I hope He knows how sad I’ll be if that never happens.

And how much I don’t want to have to give up that part of the dream.

Not now.

Not ever.

November 28, 2009

One more

Filed under: Marriage — srose @ 11:32 pm

Me (sitting on the couch with our most shy cat watching TV): Tell me you love me.

Kenny: I love you.

Me: Tell me I’m pretty.

Kenny (To whom looks mean nothing, or so he says): Growl.

Pause.

Kenny: You’re the prettiest human female who has been in the house today.  How about that?

Pause.

It then hits both of us that other human females have keys to our house.

Both of us: Unless someone snuck in.

At this, we both crack up!

Ha! After twelve years, we’re sharing a brain.

At least occasionally.

You know the drill by now

Filed under: Marriage — srose @ 11:25 pm

Me (after having read something political which I NEVER EVER do): Honey?

Kenny (who hates it when I start a question that way because it usually involves adding something to his already full to do list): Yeah? (Picture this said in a sarcastic yet wary tone.)

Me: I’ve been reading about health care and I’m getting worried.  What if something happens and I can’t…

Kenny (interrupting me before I go on and on): It’ll be okay.

Me: So if I need something you’ll get it for me?

Kenny: Yeah.

I’m just starting to feel better when he adds this: “Or shoot you, one”.

All righty then.  Good to know he has a plan.

**************************************************************************

We’re in the car.  The podcasts that Kenny has loaded have come to an end so he switches over to some random music.

I wake up to Neil “There are two kinds of people in the world.  Those who like Neil Diamond and those who don’t.” Diamond.  I happen to like Neil Diamond and am happy that the music is on my favorite song “Hello, Again, Hello”. (Yes, I know this isn’t the title of the song, but it’s what I call it.  So there.)

So we’re passing Wendy’s and then McDonald’s and the song isn’t over and we pull into our driveway and I expect Kenny to keep the song playing until it finished.  He doesn’t.  He turns the key and opens the door, which stops the music.

Me (indignantly):  Hey!  I was listening to that!

Kenny: So?  You can listen to it in the house.

Me: But it’s my favorite song!

Kenny (knowing full well that I have about a million “favorite songs”): We’re home now, it’s time to go into the house.

Me (pouting): You used to finish them for me.  You used to drive me around so I could hear the music.

Kenny (halfway to the house while I’m still in the car): Yeah.  Gas was cheaper then too.

******************************************************************************

At work running newsletters for a community group.  Running so many newsletters that we have both the old copier and the new one (that the company recommended when the old copier started acting up) working.

Kenny (upon discovering that the “new” copier is acting up while the “old one” -that used to be the “bad one” is running just fine): Piece of Garbage!

Me: Now honey, I mess up sometimes and you don’t call me a “piece of garbage”.

Kenny: Yeah, but I don’t pay $700 a month for you.

Pause

Kenny: I especially don’t pay $700 a month for you because my first wife is worn out.

Allrighty, then!

 

November 6, 2009

Conversations. Kenny. Yada Yada.

Filed under: Marriage — srose @ 3:23 pm

While watching -The Amazing Race-, a show in which teams of two people read clues, participate in challenges and try to beat the other teams in a predetermined course around the world.

Me: (upon seeing that one team didn’t read their clue) You know, it’s easy to laugh at them now, but if we were ever in that situation, we might…

Kenny: (Cutting me off in a “This is final” tone of voice) I would never be in that situation with you.

******************************************************************

Watching a different episode of -The Amazing Race- in which teams have to find a hotel by identifying the famous woman in the picture.

Me: (squinting past the sunglasses on the face of the woman in the picture) That looks like Jackie Kennedy.  Why wouldn’t they know Jackie Kennedy?

Kenny: Well the younger people wouldn’t know her. (Looking at me, realizing that he’s called me old.) But you know her because you’re weird.

******************************************************

At Wal*Mart.  One thirty in the morning after a long day at work.  Kenny wants to get our stuff, get home, go to bed.  He’s striding toward the Pepsi, not looking to the left or the right.  I’m skipping along reading all the labels on the stuff on the shelves, looking at the Holiday edition Fabreeze.

Me: (After catching up with him) Would you know if I wasn’t behind you, or would you just keep walking?

Kenny: At this point I wouldn’t care.  (Pause) Well, I’d know you weren’t with me when I got home and you weren’t in the car.

 

Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress