living for the weekend in Each Day

This week was rough. M and I took Monday off, but then there was a snow storm and it was a snow day anyway. Tuesday morning I went to PT, and during one of the circuits I felt something in my right elbow go pop, and immediately start hurting. I was so frustrated, because my left elbow has been bothering me since last October and I started dry needling in physio. A week ago last Thursday he did three needles, and my arm hurt for the rest of the week. It hurt in a way that made self regulation almost impossible. I fought tears at any provocation. So the prospect of dealing with pain in both arms was immediately demoralizing. I left the class and cried in the change room for some time.
Coincidentally I had an appointment with the PA (who until Tuesday I thought was a doctor) to get my prescription renewed already set for that day, so I told him about my arm. He set me up with physio, and I mentioned my knee was acting up so he gave me a referral to get an xray.
But that pretty much set the tone for the week.

And then Thursday night I had a weirdly tender sex dream about Old Boss. It was mostly hugging and very cliche “love making”. I texted CK and she laughed. I said, “Obviously a reflection of how I feel about him. I DON’T have sexy feelings about him (which is actually shocking to me, because that is 100% my MO, oh you’re nice to me? Let’s fuck).
And then I saw him at work, and I’m pretty sure I blushed. I felt so awkward. CK joked about telling him about the dream and I was like, NO THANKS, no harassment charges for me.

I’ve been feeling weird about the nature of my working relationship with Old Boss, feeling like I’m ignoring him, but also not knowing how casually interact. M and I have been having lunches together a lot lately, and originally Operation Befriend Old Boss was going to be me timing my lunch with his (he always eats in the lunch room) so we can chat more casually. That’s not really happened this year, yet.

Friday was such a weird day. We were all waiting for this storm to hit. One of the units got let go early, and some of my coworkers left early, but I have an issue with not leaving of my own volition (I’d rather be told it’s okay to go), but these last two fridays I’ve been at my desk later than most.
So I left. It gives me a bit of anxiety, but god I felt like I was suffocating sitting at work. M had his first therapy session (FUCKING FINALLY), and I wanted to get home to him to see what state he was in, and if it was all good, start our weekend.

Part of me is still not used to Candid M. He’s been Stoic M for so long. So when he started talking about his therapy session my brain was like “Ahhhhh”. I’m not going to talk about his therapy though, because it’s not mine to tell. But Saturday night after banging, we laid in bed and he started talking some more. I’ve found a wonderful combination of drugs (of the herbal variety) that makes me both open and receptive. It makes me very touchy, so I was running my hands over M, and sometimes myself, while we talked about our individual pasts, our mutual past, and the ways we missed each other at the beginning of our relationship.
I’ve brought up a few times lately how M did not trust me for like, the first decade of our relationship (and yes, the beginning of our marriage, too), and there’s a certain amount of guilt I feel for talking about it. But I see connections between this fact and the way things played out at different parts of our relationship that are relevant to the things we’re talking about. Trying to walk the line of “this is critical information for learning” vs “this is a past hurt that I’m not letting go” gets weird, sometimes. Especially considering the latter isn’t even true. Having M admit that he didn’t trust me was a fucking revelation!! I’d felt it, because his words and his behaviour didn’t match. It was like being gaslit by a ghost.
We talked about Afghanistan, too. We talked about his desire for me to watch certain shows and movies so that I could see what it was like, but also him respecting my absolute refusal to do so. I told him that there’s definitely a curiosity, but that it feels like a pandoras box. I don’t want to know the reality because the pieces I’ve put together from the stories he’s told, the pieces from my perspective and the stories from the wives we told each other, that’s something I can live with. But it feels fragile and I don’t want it being challenged by reality. Wilful denial. At one point I said a lot, and finished with, “And I can’t believe I have this much to say on this subject when I’m the one who stayed home”.

Anyway, Friday was lovely, we started watching Wonka, but didn’t make it through before heading upstairs.
Saturday it snowed a whole bunch. I cleaned the dining room and started a bin for items that are part of intended projects. We played video games and watched “Deal of the Century”, which is a very bizarre movie where Chevy Chase is a weapons dealer. It was not conducive to the sexy feelings I was having, and I guess M felt the same because we stopped the movie at 9pm and went upstairs.
After banging and talking we came downstairs, it wasn’t even midnight, for a mini feast of cereal, fruit, and spring rolls, continuing our talking the whole time.
We also talked about what our respective lives were like at 17, in 1989 and 1999. We talked about the obvious differences, the internet existed in 99, and I spent a lot of time in my parents basement being myself on chat rooms (oh how I miss the Gothic Cathedral), when he was playing music at house parties. He was a huge pot head and drank a bunch, I was pretty anti-drug and was not really interested in drinking. He was wrapped up in his little life in our hometown, and all I wanted to do was get away. I was heading towards heartbreak. The highlight of my days walking around downtown with The Odd Lady. Maybe watching Bird Guy and his friends at the skate park. I felt stifled at home, but free among my friends. His experience seemed far less complicated. But he also left home much younger than me, and was on his way to marrying his high school sweetheart. It was really interesting, and we agreed to try this again with a different age on another night.

At one point he asked me something, and I talked about how most of my life I’ve been bracing against disappointment. I said I know it sounds terrible, but it’s not necessarily the failure of people in my life, but this magical thinking I have where I create all these ideas and desires and when no one reads my mind I get disappointed. My 40th birthday is a prime example. I was trying to illustrate what I meant, and I said, “you know how people envision their engagement, and then if the engagement doesn’t live up to this standard in your head, it’s hard to not be disappointed”, and then immediately had to back track, because I love our engagement story. And then M told me all the parts he’d planned, and then how spectacularly they blew up (along with his motorcycle), and then I had to ride home, get the truck and come pick him up and how he spent that 2 hours or so wondering if he should continue with the plan. He talked about how he had to on the spot find the perfect place to do it, at which point I thought to ask, “wait, did you plan the whole looking at bugs in puddles, too?” He had!! Maybe not the bugs exactly, but he did want to pull the ring out of the water that accumulates on the rocks and the bugs were an entertaining distraction to him executing his plan. It was perfect, I’d wandered off, he says, “Hey, come look at this!” and I turn to see him on one knee, pulling a ring out of the water. And then me losing my shit. Perfect.

A while into M and I connecting like this and I started to develop a low anxiety of when this connection would wane. That was over 3 years ago and there’s no signs of it stopping, only these moments becoming more common. I am so very lucky.