Choices. I have some to make. I don’t want to make any of them, so I just stay here, struggling, sad, hurting. It gets increasingly harder to get up in the morning. The pain runs so deep. My head hurts and feels heavy, my thinking isn’t clear, my neck, shoulders and back hurt, my energy and passion for… pretty much anything I used to have passion for is gone and the thought of leaving my bed to do the same thing I did yesterday, and the day before and the day before makes me want to die. I want to sleep for a thousand years. But I know I can’t because people need me to do the things I’ve been doing, you know, so we can eat and pay bills. I don’t know if I have ever woken up consistently feeling refreshed, clear headed and excited for what the day will bring. Something has to change. I need change, to make the conscious decision and plans to change. I’m not sure exactly what I want or how to make anything I want happen. My fear is that things will change and I’ll hate that too, because wherever I go, whatever I do, I’ll still be me.
My husband thinks I’m not in love with him anymore…
I guess I’m not. I’m not sure I ever was, not in love the way I want to be, not the way he wants me to be. He wants to know if there is any point in him trying anymore. I’m not sure there is. I HURT over this. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. The man is beautiful. I enjoy watching him walk around with his graceful long lean muscular body, the savagely beautiful dreads hanging over his shoulders. I like the way he smells and the way it feels to wrap my arms around his waist and bury my head in his chest. I like seeing him stalk through a crowd of people because he is always hands down the most beautiful person among them. Maybe it’s a good thing he doesn’t know it, my god he’d be so cocky! I also feel safe when I’m with him. No one can harm me, or do me wrong in any way. He assesses situations and knows how to handle himself. He has never had a spending problem. He ALWAYS handles his shit. Bills are paid, even if just barely sometimes. He does freaking dishes and laundry and anything else that needs to be done, for God’s sake, WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME? He’s an AMAZING man. He makes sure the kids get to school and that their homework is done. He’s a good dad and a good husband and here I am…not loving him. I can like and admire him all day, and be so incredibly grateful for all he does and then, when it comes down to OUR time, I reject him. My body refuses to open to him. My mind refuses to open to him. We never reduce each other to gails of laughter or engage in deep soulful conversations about anything in which we are both enthralled with. We don’t PLAY, and I think it’s because I don’t get his type of play, I’m never in the mood to play when he is or one of us (usually me) takes it too seriously. We just don’t really “get” each other. I don’t feel like being dirty and naughty with him. I’ve tried, and his reaction always somehow falls flat for me. When I open up for him to love me physically, its because I know I can’t keep denying him, I MUST open up, for HIM, and sure I get off about half way through. He’s always made sure I was satisfied before he is, but I don’t feel CONNECTED to him mentally or spiritually or physically. I’m never aching for or excited in anticipation of his physical love. No, it’s worse than that. Sometimes, when He’s trying to touch me in a way that I know means he wants my love, my body shrinks in on itself. I tighten up and can’t stand the thought of letting him have my body. My breasts are actually irritated at his touch and my legs clamp together, when his touch should bring warmth and tingling excitement. My body should instinctively want to move closer and want to rove all over his body, not shrink away. It’s involuntary, I can’t help it, God knows I’ve tried. I’ve prayed and prayed and tried to “get my head in the game” for YEARS, but it’s not working. It’s not because he’s not good either, he is, he knows exactly how to use what he’s got. I wish I knew how to change this. I wish I knew how to get that feeling back if it ever was there at all. I don’t know why it ended up this way, or how, or if it can ever be fixed. I used to think that it was because I was a mom now, because I didn’t like my body, because I was getting old, or because the stresses of life killed my libido, but the truth is, my body and my mind have responded to someone else and I don’t know what the hell this is all about.
Now I have to think really hard about all of this. I can’t keep doing what I’ve been doing. What I have done is something I never thought I would do. I thought I was a good person. I thought I was one of the most loyal bitches on the planet. I cut friends off for having affairs because I didn’t agree with what they were doing. I judged relatives and strangers alike for doing what I’ve done. And that with his FRIEND! This person isn’t some rich good looking stud who can make all my dreams come true either! Oh no! He’s a short, skinny, tattooed, little punk rock skater, snaggle toothed troll who lives off of diss-a-freaking-bility in a TRAILER like 1000 miles away! What. The actual. Fuck Jeanette???
How did this happen? Well, read all my other blogs and see the progression. I was doing kinda ok till I lost my job last year and I had hope. I thought I’d be able to pursue my passions and make a living that way. I really REALLY thought that it was going to happen, but all the doors got slammed in my face. The sex problem has been there almost the entire marriage, and I have wanted out before, but always chalked it up to depression. Maybe it IS depression, or depression is a part of it, or maybe just plain dissatisfaction with society and this way of life leads to depression. I don’t know. I just know that me and my husband are not one of those couples that you see around who you can tell are not only married, but also best friends who vibe off each other, finish each other’s sentences, love to play with each other and do things together, have inside jokes, find adventure going to the grocery store, feed each others passions and lift each other up. I feel like we don’t know how to make each other feel better, but instead get bitter when the other is down and resent having to pick up each other’s slack. I feel like when I’m sick, he doesn’t care so much that I hurt, but more that it makes more work for him. I feel like he’s killed my passions, stomped them out on the rock of reality more than he has ever encouraged them. Don’t get me wrong, reality is a thing, I know this. It’s not his fault that bills have always had to come first if we were to feed the kids. We’ve never had good paying jobs and therefore never had the money to pursue passions. We MUST have steady paychecks no matter how small. Risks are all the more risky when you have three kids. I get that, and he IS trying now. I just feel like it’s fake. The trying and wanting to make it work is real, but the actual passion for the things I have passion for, just isn’t him, and why would I want to MAKE him feel passion for anything that isn’t him? That’s like me sitting through hours of football games trying desperately to love it and then sitting with him going over all the stats and trying to participate in his Fantasy Football Leagues. Uuuummmm no thanks! That’s not fair. And it’s not fair for him to keep getting rejected when he’s not worthy of rejection. I WISH I knew how to love him. I wish he was capable of loving me the way I need to be loved. In these times that are so hard and so scary, I really want to curl up into him and let him comfort me and to comfort him back because I know that out of all the people on this earth, he cares for me the most right now and I truly care for him. But what good is that going to do when nothing is ever going to change and when it comes down to sex (what I know he looks to for comfort from me), I just can’t get to that place? I truly don’t know why he’s still here after all the times I’ve rejected him physically. It’s not fair to either of us. But I don’t know how to leave, and he doesn’t know how to let me go.
How can I leave fifteen years of marriage, of building, struggling, raising kids? My kids. I can’t leave my kids! I’m their MOM. No I’m not happy. I’ve been in the deepest, darkest depression of my lifetime this past year and a half. It’s literally all I can do to get up in the morning and keep putting one foot in front of the other, to do my work and try to pretend that I’m fine all day, to come home and try my damndest to do ANYTHING after work, including helping kids with homework, then go to bed hoping he won’t try to get on me and knowing that I have to do it all over again the next day. I really REALLY hate life right now. I feel like a slave to society, like I’m going nowhere, like nothing will ever change. There is no hope of ever paying off any bills, there is no hope of travel, of seeing anything new, of making this house into what I had envisioned for it. It’s a struggle when I have to get new clothes for the job I don’t even want, we have no savings, no cushion, no way of getting the kids their teeth fixed or lessons they want or vacations… no way to even help them make their dreams come true, no hope.
My feeling like this isn’t helping my kids, but my presence is still better than my absence. Sometimes I pray for death to release me from this world, and then I can just sleep for ever, get the rest I so desperately desire, but my kids need me in whatever capacity I can be there for them. They all talk to me in a way they don’t talk to anyone else. When my oldest sees the struggle and sadness in my eyes she says, “Oh Uhmma! I love you!” and hugs me tight. She tells me all about everything going on in her life with friends and boys and music and school. She follows me around when she’s home and insists that I watch her videos with her, she craves my company, which I love and hate. My middle girl is the sensitive one who HATED me for doing this when her dad found out. She would barely talk to me, refused to hug me or touch me, and it’s taken her this whole year to get to a place where she’s started to hug and cuddle and talk to me again. I think it’s not because she’s ok with what’s happening, but because she sees me struggle personally but also still love her. I never stopped trying to love her even as I gave her space and the right to hate me for what I’d done. She also talks to me about EVERYTHING in a way that she can’t talk to anyone else, like how kids tease her about her hair at school, how she struggles in her classes, what her friends are doing, who she likes and I can’t leave her. And my boy, my youngest, he gets good grades by himself and plays flag football. He’s one of the best on his team. He just gets how to play the game and blocks like no other. He still has a passion for everything. Holidays especially. It hurts so badly to see him so excited about those things, the decorating and the spirit of the thing and I can’t get there now even though I was the one that gave him that fire in the first place. I don’t WANT to do anything. I used to want to carve my own pumpkins while helping them with theirs and bake pies and roast the pumpkin seeds. Christmas literally threw up all over our home in a big tacky mess of glitter and bows. But that’s all dead to me now. I want it back, but there is no time or energy left for that after working so much for nothing. Holidays bring more depression now because there is no money or energy or time left to do the things I used to. Even when I had the energy and the passion (There was never any money.), I remember feeling like it was dampened by my husbands lack of enthusiasm. He never understood my passion for it. Not his fault, it just is what it is. But the boy still has it, and he’s bright and funny and loves me. He always wants me to go in his room to say goodnight and spoil him with a massage or scratching his back while he talks to me about silly stuff that little boys talk about. They all three want me to do stuff with them that I would do if I had the time energy and money, but they also like just going for walks once in a while or watching a movie or just cuddling up and talking, or fighting with each other over me while I scream at them to keep their hands to themselves.
And through all this, I miss my Trailer Trash Boy and all the excitement and passion he brought back to me that I’m now having to reject, and I hate him for existing, and myself for loving his stupid ass. I miss him. He made me laugh every single day, like, out loud, with his stupid messages. He had passion for art, MY art, his own art, and not just lately, but ever since he met me. He understands who I am. My husband does too, but this asshole LIKES it. He’s not just tolerating it and hoping I’ll grow the fuck up, start adulting and stop complaining. Of course that’s easy for someone to do when it isn’t THEIR kids needing the food and shelter, when YOU’RE not the one who needs help with the bills. GOD! I’m so fucked up. I tried really hard for a whole god damned YEAR to stay away from that fool, to let him go, to not think about him, and I fucked up again. Let him back in. I fuckin miss his dumb ugly face. What. the fuck. is WRONG with me?
I met him fifteen years ago. He was married with two kids, and I was dating my now husband. I’ve always liked his energy and he and my husband have always had this weird love/hate thing going on. Well, now it’s pure hate on my husband’s end, but that’s understandable. He saw what I could do with art and was so excited and impressed that he talked to people about it. I got pregnant three months into dating my husband and we decided to make it work and were married four months later. Trailer Trash Boy was actually AT our wedding. not long after, he and his wife started having trouble and they split. She took the kids and he rarely got to see them. Then he was hurt on a construction job and had to have multiple surgeries. He never could go back to work. It sent him into depression. He drank a lot back then, but I still liked him. He was always so positive about everything that was me whenever we interacted. He was heartbroken over his wife and worse over never getting to see his kids and every time we talked, I could see it, feel it. I never wanted to cause anyone that kind of pain. Once, I got a call from a lady who said he’d been into her art store, that they were looking for artists and he had talked me up so much that she wanted me to come show her my work. I did, and that was my first art show. It happened to be in Tahoe in the middle of December during one of the worst winters ever, so it wasn’t so successful, but still. He was this crazy little drunk going around selling my talent to people for literally no gain. He’d call me drunk looking for my husband and we’d end up on the phone for hours. Never talking about anything shady or inappropriate, just talking about life and how it should be and art and kids and treehouses. I have to admit he used to drive me a little nuts cuz he was drunk and wouldn’t shut up, but I liked him. Every time he was around I gravitated toward this little fucker who irritated the shit out of everyone else. I thought he was funny and I got where he was coming from with most of the things he said. I didn’t WANT to like him. I saw how his energy was too much for most people and I saw how my husband could never decide if he liked him or hated him. Regardless, I always wanted to see him. I DID keep my feelings in check every time I did see him and even after. I tried not to let my head go where it wanted to. I loved my family, and I still do.
The little twerp makes art of his own because he saw ME make art and talked to me about it all those years ago. He helped his brother build a mother fucking TREEHOUSE in the mountains in Colorado and spent a summer carving the tree stumps around it into totems and planters! There is a fire pit and an outhouse and an outdoor kitchen. I guess his brother has ten acres out there and he has an unfinished platform that he never completed because…well, why when it’s just him? He also has a lot in Costa Rica in a place called Finca Bellavista, which is a sustainable treehouse community. He never built because, well, I don’t know why. I guess the money and time wasn’t there yet. I just don’t know. He has two trailers, one he’s remodeled and is leasing, and one he is living in and fixing. His adult son lives there right now too, but has a good paying welding job and won’t be there forever. So yea, a fixed income trailer trash boy, but he makes art and knows how to fix/build things including livable TREEHOUSES and he makes me laugh, like a LOT. I think about him trying to play with me and instead of wanting to get away, I want to lick his ugly face. GOD I’M A BITCH!
So, he had started talking to both me and my husband about a year and a half ago. I still don’t know what went down with them really, but he wanted me to make a sculpture for his daughter for Christmas that year. I was about to loose my job of 6 years because the owner was going to retire. This was a paying art commission, and one I was very inspired to do, not because it was him asking, but because the subject appealed to me so much that the image came to me quickly with no struggle. I had just learned about this place called The Generator here in Reno where artists make a lot of the Burning Man art. I got in with their ceramics room and started creating. I was in heaven! I was creating something that no one I told could believe I was gonna pull off, in a space FULL of other creatives! I’d send pictures to him of my progress and we’d talk about life and kids and treehouses and art like we always did and just be silly and excited about the project. He was also messaging my husband and I guess they got in a fight. My husband forbade me from talking to him, so I wrote him and told him I didn’t know what was going on, but that I wasn’t going to talk to him anymore. I wrote more than I should have about things that I shouldn’t have and then cut him off completely…and cried like a baby about it alone in my closet.
More of this story to come next time I have time and energy. I just need to get it out and write out all the options I have. Like I said, none of them are good, but choices need to be made, no matter what, if I’m to move forward with my life and not be stuck in this damned purgatory I’ve been wallowing in the past year and a half.
JETTE 