There are many days in my married life where I don’t share a single genuine or meaningful thought with the man I am married to.  Most of those days are the days we are “grinding”.  The days that we go to work filled with what the world expects from us and prepared to deliver.  And upon returning home we continue in our respective roles of what each of us expects from each other.  There is conversation with the children during the home cooked meal I have prepared.  It is a run down of scheduled events including times for arrival, shower schedule, and bedtimes.  If there is a moment on the couch to connect, more often than not, we are both looking forward at a buzzing TV while simultaneously looking down at our phones.

I feel that I must not be alone with this reality, but there are many days I wake up wondering if today might be a day that I am able to share my heart with him.  It is the same heart he has been holding for the last 17 years, so maybe that is why he doesn’t feel the need to listen to it so intently anymore.  Maybe that is why I don’t seem to share it as intently anymore.

There is an inner voice that speaks loudly and at incredible speeds inside my head.  I find myself listening and revising all that is inside of my head throughout the day, so when he does finally turn his attention to me and only a few words come out, it is a shock, even to myself.

There is a world that I have been writing down in this computer and a life that I have been dreaming of living.  A life where I write and read, and write and read some more.  It is a life where he is interested in what I am writing and I’m excited to share it with him.  On some level I feel that if he believes in me I can believe in me.  Although, even writing that feels like a betrayal to my independent self.  What if he never believes in my writing, should I cease to write?  What would I tell my daughter?  I would tell her to write anyway.  And so here I am, writing anyway.  And I will continue to write whether he enjoys it or understands or not.

Writing is a place where my thoughts can take leave and I can find space for myself on the page.  Somedays it is like this, other days there are paragraphs and page numbers.

There are days in my married life, like this time last year, where my husband was my greatest source of strength.  I awoke every morning to his face looking at mine with a smile.  He smiled with the love and tenderness that a man has for his wife when he has been through the same agony of watching a parent slowly die.  He held me up and listened as I played out every scenario and tried to control that which I had no control over, my father’s inevitable death.

There are days in my married life when I am dying inside to to seen and heard, not just needed and felt.  Days upon days where I can go through the motions of the doing of things without a real sense of being.  I felt this before when Ryan was a baby.  It was similar to sleepwalking.  I was going through the motions and never really feeling them.  When I “came to” as it were, I knew I had to leave my intensely stressful, 70 hour a week corporate sales position.  This feeling today is similar, however, I don’t want to leave.  I just want to be seen.  I want to want to be seen, because believe me, it isn’t all him.  Nope.  I can stay comfortably inside my bubble of duty and obligation long enough to have everyone forget I am I even in there.  I can do that for a myriad of reasons.  I’m moody.  I’m depressed.  I’m more interested in my new Netflix show than connecting.  I’m comfortable being the martyr serving everyone’s needs.  But sometimes, I am afraid that what I will say won’t even be heard.  

There are some days in my married life when I put myself out there to be heard and seen by saying something like, “I’m really lonely today.  It was a bad day.”  To be met with a head nod, a kind smile, and a return to the game on his phone.  Those are the worst of our days together.  Those are the days that remind me so much of my days growing up where my needs and emotions were cast off as “extra” and “secondary” to the real stuff in life.  The real stuff.  That is the real stuff.  That is the real stuff that I show up for with my children.

Or I should say, I try to show up for my children.

In my parenting life there have been many days when I have been distracted or judgmental, when saying nothing would have served me better than saying the something that I said.  Saying sorry, while it is a nice gesture, isn’t the fix all.  The real apology is the amended behavior.  The active listening.  The impassioned conversation about next to nothing that they both leave me feeling heard and seen.

Some days in my life, things feel harder than usual and heavier than normal.

Some days are just like today.