15-04.15.81 in Book Two: The Fifteenth Year of the Third Millennium of the Common Era

The One in Which My Tuesday is thoroughly discussed!

As should be understandable, I’ve had increasing difficulties sleeping this month. What with everything going on, it all seems to keep piling up. In fact, even when I do get to sleep, I catch maybe an hour or two and then I’m awake because… well… frankly, I think my mind is trying to work through too many things at once. Monday Night/Tuesday Morning was quite similar. So… on Tuesday morning, I decided to finally give up the attempt to grab any Zzs and retreated to my computer. On a whim, I punched up the Iowa Courts website to see if there was any information about the Bar Exam posted. And, to my absolute shock, the scores were already posted. A day early!

I opened the announcement webpage and started scanning. G....H....K.... that’s my name! That’s me!! Wait… is this them who passed or failed? Quick check on the top again… “the following students have passed the examination”.... H…K… yeah! That’s me. I passed!! I sat in stunned ecstasy silently rejoicing. I almost cried at the impact of finally releasing the fear and anxiety and knowing, knowing that I’ll likely never have to take this dreadful exam again!! I waited until 10 am before returning to the bedroom. As my wife stirred a bit, I woke her to tell her the good news. She smiled and went straight back to bed. No jubilation, no hug for celebration… just :) ZZZ. I gave her the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps she was in that “in-between” stage of awake and asleep.

Turns out.... not really. I discover that I’ll not need to take the Bar again… I find out I passed the bar exam and will be allowed to look for work and become a practicing attorney!! And… do you want to know my day?

When the wife finally did wake up… I was doing a load of laundry, so she decided she should probably do a load of dishes. Then… worked on her resume. As she worked on her resume, I fiddled about on video games and a few brief conversations on-line with friends and family. I asked if Wife would be up for going out on the town to celebrate and she responded that (1) it would depend on how she felt after exercise and (2) Our shows are on tonight. So… more of her with her resume… and then her on her phone playing a game… then her and I getting in a quick run… followed by her watching 4 solid hours of Midsomer Murder; though she was nice enough to cook up a Skillet Meal for dinner. Then “Agents of SHIELD” and “Face Off” before… going right back to watching Midsomer Murders.

And that, my dear friends, was the entirety of my day and celebration at discovering I had passed the bar exam. My day was… tell my wife (who exhibited no surprise or joy); then spend the day with her (as usual) completely absorbed in her own interests and decisions as to what to do with the day. Frankly, not for the first time but surely for the strongest time, I face an interesting intellectual concept.

I do enjoy having my wife around. She is beautiful to me, I love making her smile, and the rare times I can get her to truly interact with me are great. But a marriage needs interaction. A marriage needs one person to emote with and for the other. And so I think again about the eHarmony thing. Just because… I want to spend time with another human being that can express their emotions, that can have emotions for and with another human being. I want to feel close or connected to another soul that returns that closeness. I want to give someone fantastic news and watch as their reaction is pure joy and excitement.

And of course I think about that. And it is what is keeping me up tonight. The biggest intellectual challenge of my life has been completed. I have conquered my Winter Bar Exam Dragon. But now as I begin to look for work and a home… I really do have to think carefully about the Marriage Dragon. Grated… autism would make it difficult for my wife to be what I need… apparently. As I want to be… noticed… in her world and for my life to have discernible meaning to her… apparently, that may be something autistic people simply can’t give. Or maybe it is. Maybe if I get a great job, and we move, and Wife doesn’t have to keep working at Wal Mart, and we find a half-way decent therapist… maybe my marriage CAN provide what I need. Because… I keep coming back ‘round to it. Emotion and Expression. Complete strangers expressed more joy and relief over my Bar Success than my wife did. I had people specifically make time in their day just to ring me or say something nice to me… and my own wife simply goes about her day and watches the programs she most enjoys. Part of me whispers softly that I should be more aggressive. I shouldn’t allow her to behave in such a way and I should simply demand that she give me what I need or be done with it. But I can’t help but feel like a brute at that thought. Imagine the awkward nature of that conversation. “Wife, I demand you positively acknowledge my achievement and behave in a manner that reflects adequate joy.” Humbug! But of course my head-thoughts also keep bringing up… it may not be fair to call her selfish, or self-centered, or self-absorbed. This all seems like the kind of behavior that stems from autism; so leaving her over it feels rather like leaving someone because they had to have their arm amputated. It just… it is the next great stressor, I suppose.

In other words; my Winter Dragon is dead. I have conquered the snow beast. Now… to deal with the Marriage Dragon!