I'm Tempted to Skip This Part, But I'm Not Going To

I'm tempted to just skip from Christmas to New Year's and just leave in the smiley, happy parts with pictures.

But, I'm not going to. Because if I'm learning anything right now, it's that it's okay, and good, to not be perfect.

So, I'm going to share with you something I wrote in my journal about a yucky day that unfolded in the middle of that week between Christmas and New Year's.

Here it is: (My journal on 1/1/11)

I spent the couple of days before Christmas sick. And the entire week afterward home from work, sick. I cried and cried because I wanted so badly to be taken care of. I cried because no matter how tired I am, no matter how sick I am, or how drugged up I am, I have to take care of Michael first. Sometimes I feel like my life revolves around his needs.

One day I went to CVS to the Minute Clinic. I was diagnosed with severe Bronchitis and I was given two prescriptions and I was told to take it easy for a week, and not drive while I was on the cough syrup with Coedine. I immediately called my husband when I was done meeting with the doctor. There was no answer. He was supposed to be expecting my call! If he can’t drive me to the doctor when I’m sick, he should at least sit by the phone and wait for my call, right? I tried again, no answer. I called my mom, who had already accurately diagnosed me and prescribed the same medicine my doctor prescribed, from 200 miles away, and after talking to me on the phone only twice in a week or so. How do they do that?

I texted Michael. Emailed him. Wrote on his Facebook wall. Nothing. The time since I left the apartment approached two hours. Still nothing. As I was driving into our apartment complex, crying feeling sorry for myself that my husband doesn’t even care enough about me to answer his phone, I thought to myself, ever-so-slightly, that “he better be on the floor or something.”

(I already know I'm a horrible person, no need to comment here)

Sure enough... I walk into our apartment, and to my left, underneath the Christmas tree, lies my husband. In an awkward position, on his knee and his head, butt up in the air. Wheelchair still upright. “I’m okay,” he says. I took off my coat, set the bag of medicine down on the counter and went over to him. Thought #1: I’m a horrible person. Thought #2: How can he do this to me??? I’m the sick one!!! Do not mess with my title! I am earning this pity party! I’m exhausted, and now I have to muster up the strength to pick you up off the ground!!! He told me to sit with him, on the floor. So I did. We sat facing each other, knees to knees. And I cried. I went on and on about how I just don’t matter, ever, and he doesn’t understand that because he always gets to matter. He probably said some other sweet, wonderful things trying to encourage me, but I wasn’t having it. I was angry. And exhausted. And sick, remember?

I scooted his butt back up against the couch. Stood on the couch and lifted him, from behind, up onto the couch. Then I was about to transfer him from the couch and I said something else, probably self-absorbed and not-nice, and that’s when it happened. We went into full blown fight mode. Oh, it was ON then! I picked his butt up, put him in the chair, and didn’t say another word. I started unloading the dishwasher and he started going down the front hall to the office. He said he was sorry for saying something mean. I knew he was. I was also so angry at that point, I know what it’s like to be so angry you say something you don’t mean.

We cried, together. Me sitting there on his lap. I told him that it’s so hard living with him, waking up next to him and laying down next to him everyday. That the “perspective” I have to face everyday of him being paralyzed and how it just trumps everything and makes it impossible for me to feel like I ever matter, or ever actually have any problems that are significant, because up against THAT, nothing even registers on the Richter scale, ya know? That, at the end of the day, I’m wiping his butt. Literally and figuratively. But, he pointed out, you’re not my butt-wiper. So true! Profound. Like he walks the dog, but I don’t view him as the dog walker. I don’t. Such a good point.

After that day there was another day of me crying like a whiny baby because I just wanted him so badly to just say “good morning” to me or ask if I needed anything. Or ask if I wanted a cup of tea when he was heating one up. There was another day when I was cleaning and organizing and cleaning and organizing while repeating to myself, sometimes silently and sometimes not-so-silently, “shut up, do your job, expect nothing because you deserve nothing.” Feeling all used, and taken advantage of....

Then, I started my period. :)

It’s not completely that simple, really. There’s still so much to process.
But today was a good day. And last night was a good night. And that’s already SUCH an improvement over last New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.

I can assure you that 2010 was one of the hardest years of my life. I’m tempted to say it was the “worst” year, but I don’t know, now that all is said and done, that I can actually say that. A lot of seeds were planted in me in 2010. I endured deep pain, mostly emotionally, some physically. I never made it through a week without crying in 2010. That sounds so sad, doesn’t it? It was. It was a really, really sad year. I shed a lot of tears, lost weight, gained it back, lost hair, had anxiety attacks and high blood pressure and found a varicose vein in one of my legs.

First goal for 2011. Be happier and just chill out. Life is short. Sometimes it's sad. Sometimes it's just PMS.