Bad Timing in Book Six: Trying to Hold On 2019

Here’s something.

So as you know I’ve been spending a lot of time neck-deep in the kind of truly awful shit that can destroy people. I am of course talking about Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Child Abandonment, and Child Sexual Abuse and Trafficking. This has been the bulk of my work day this month. So I’ve got that pressing onto my heart and mind.

Luckily, when I got home… Wife was walking Nala. So as emotionally, physically, and mentally exhausted as I was… I just lay in bed. Wife and Nala returned from the walk and joined me in the bed, with Wife even cuddling a little. GOOD.

So as you know I’ve been spending a lot of my evening hours practicing a play where my character is struggling with a divorce. A divorce all of his friends and family saw coming BUT the character spent a lot of time and energy trying to avoid. So that has been pressing on my heart and mind a lot. Worse, though, is that tonight’s rehearsal was Act 2, Scene 1. Which we did 3 times. This entire scene is the Push/Pull portion. My character is focusing more and more on the reality that divorce may be inevitable and how devastating that thought is to him. Not just emotionally but intellectually and spiritually. It is the scene where he is most struggling with what, by that point, is inevitable. And everyone else on stage spends the entire scene convincing him that the Divorce is not only inevitable but necessary. That he absolutely needs to see the divorce through. That his marriage was NEVER really that much of a marriage and it certainly wasn’t good for the last year or so. Yeah, that is the scene we ran three times tonight. SO as you might be able to understand from that… it is a scene that CLEARLY hits a little too close to home for me.

With that on my mind, the drive home from practice is… unpleasant. As I keep thinking of my reality and my options and the world at large.
(1) Stick it out, be patient, treat it like a long term investment that just hasn’t paid off yet and hope for health. Reasoning: Wife is getting better at things that, normally, I would have assumed all humans could just… understand. Like saying I love you or being kind to someone you allegedly love. She is getting better at that. But things like helping me, supporting me, making me feel wanted… these are not just surface elements to a marriage and I’m not happy that the (ME) half of the marriage consistently gets so little attention.
(2) Divorce. Both of us might get lucky and find someone with whom love is easier, sex is more fulfilling, and life isn’t as much of a daily struggle.
(3) Stick it out. Nothing gets better. But better to live with a friend that cares than live in loneliness forever.
(4) Divorce. She gets lucky and finds someone with whom love is easier, sex is more fulfilling, and life isn’t as much of a daily struggle; while I remain lonely and unable to find my version of that person.
(5) Divorce. Neither of us gets lucky; both of us remain lonely and unable to find our version of That Person with whom love is easier, sex is more fulfilling, and life isn’t as much of a daily struggle.
SO… of those scenarios… statistically speaking… The only two that scenarios that end well for me are either (1) miracle from God, or (2) cause pain to myself and someone I love in order to maybe, miraculously, potentially find someone else to love. An unpleasant car ride home.

So I get home and we (Wife and I) need to head to the grocery store. This is one way in which she does help. If I am going to make up to 30 servings of food this weekend, that will take a considerable amount of groceries. Having Wife present during Grocery shopping can and does shave off a great deal of time. So we go to the store and… I’ll admit… I was rough, borderline hostile. Because I have all of this on my mind. My work, my play, my marriage problems, the fact that I’m genuinely not sure how much help I’ll actually get from Wife this weekend on “basic adult shit” like cleaning the house and making food. It was all… kind of eating at me.

Then we get home!! Remember the picture from last week of Nala having eaten the phone book to shreds? So that perhaps, a responsible adult-like person would consider “Maybe owning a small energetic dog would mean to not leave important papers lying on the ground where an unsupervised dog could easily destroy them”?? Apparently, despite being 243 days from her 40th Birthday, basic adult level considerations like that still escape my wife. As, when we returned from the store… the house was littered with shredded paper everywhere. Not just any shredded paper… Wife’s SCHOOL NOTEBOOK WITH HER NOTES AND HOMEWORK! She had left them on the floor in front of the couch. Luckily Nala only ate 12 pages. SO, most of the homework had already been transferred to the computer and turned in. SO… as far as the Human Cost, it wasn’t terrible. But I can’t help but also extrapolate the whole damned thing as well. She doesn’t consider the fact that other living things share her space. She doesn’t think “Chris lives here, what can I do for him? How can I make him feel safe or loved?” She doesn’t think “Nala lives here, what can I do to make sure this is a safe space for her and we limit the ways she could harm herself or get sick?” And… it frustrates me.