Credit

The two of us are sprawled on the bed, not touching, physically spent to the point where we can't take anymore and space is such an overwhelming need that we have to break all contact.

Minutes go by as we try to catch our breath and recover. Something stops buzzing in my ears and the room suddenly feels very quiet. I roll onto my side and close my eyes. I am tired and sleepy but I am fighting to stay awake because I don't want the night to be over. I listen for his breathing. Is he done for the night? Is he asleep?

I wait. And am not disappointed. A few minutes later, he's asking if am hungry. I get out of bed without answering. I am trying to keep the goofy grin hidden from him.

I go to the bathroom first and stand under the shower. It wakes me up a little. Enough to go to the kitchen and see about getting us a late night snack.

The intention is that we will eat it in bed but he comes into the kitchen and starts eating the filling out of my sandwiches. I am laughing and slapping his hands. I like to serve things properly. A brief struggle ensues over the food.

Then we quiet down and we eat on our feet, leaning on the kitchen counters, talking about the sort of things people talk about when they just don't want to be silent.

We keep grinning at each other like we just discovered a cure for cancer or something.

We go back to bed. And this time he's out like a light in no time. I lie there in the dark for ages, smiling to myself. Too happy to sleep.

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These days I am nearly always angry with him because I don't feel good most of the time and I blame him for it. And being angry about one thing (his abscence), it keeps my mind focused on all the other ways in which I feel he failed me. Like the fact that we're still childless. And the fact that he's no longer as patient with my neurosis as he used to be.

I mean, I can remember crying in his arms. I can remember him taking so much time to calm me down, to laugh away whatever happened to be bothering me at a given time.

I can remember when he seemed invincible to me, when I thought he could handle anything including me and anything I chose to dump on him. All without complaint and in the best of humor.

Now I feel like if I cry he's more likely to throw something at me than take me in his arms. I have to go to other people for that type of comfort. And am not allowed to complain to him AT ALL. About anything. Not unless I want to bring out the worst in him. He just will not have it.

It's kind of ironic that before we got married, when most of my freaking out was done out of wedding nerves or fear of commitment or seperation anxiety (from my family), he had so much patience. Those seem like trivial issues when compared to what am going through now or what I went through after the miscarriage. And yet he has so much less time and energy for me now.

Can it be that I used up all his support over the little things so that when the going started to get really tough, he was out of patience? Or is it that I took too much and didn't give enough back? Or that he's got his own issues now?

Is that how it works? And if it is, why won't he say so? Why won't he tell me what I can do to fix it? What, if anything, he needs from me now?

Sometimes I feel so shut out by the physical and emotional distance that I wish he'd just come out and tell me that it's over, that he doesn't love me or need me anymore. Even that seems better than never really knowing what's on his mind.

I told him that once quite recently and all he said was that if you're in love, you never think about breaking up. And I was left feeling like I had to apologize for bringing it up.

Whatever. So I am angry at him now because he's not really doing very well on the making-me-feel-good scale.

With that in mind, the Libra in me decided it's only fair that I should give him credit for also being behind all the times in my life I was so happy I couldn't sleep. I should give him credit for nights like the one above which was not atypical by any means.

Like the first time he said he loved me. That night I thought I'd never want to sleep again. I had so much energy I never even got into bed all night.

And so many other different occasions. Too many to list or to count really.

Readers of this blog know that insomnia is the story of my life. But that was happy insomnia, insomnia because you're so happy that falling asleep feels like missing out, insomnia because you WANT to be aware - not because you can't sleep. THAT I would recommend to anyone. And that's what he can and did give me.

It's the high that makes all the lows worthwhile. Or does it?

For now I guess it does, sort of. I just hope that at some point things will get better so that I don't have to keep relying on the past to make the present bearable.