Anyone who has read here for any length of time knows that I struggle with relationship issues. Struggle to the point of nearly giving up on several occasions. It's not that hubby is a bad one, necessarily, he just posesses the exact number of annoyances and quirks and behaviors to sometimes make living with him unbearable. I'm sure everyone has felt that way about their spouse from time to time.
So, the past six months or more have been exceptionally tedious with at least two occasions where we both thought it might be time to stop trying to force things to be what we wanted them to be and just move on. Somehow, though, we've always managed to work through whatever the problem of the moment was. Granted, it was more of a bandaid solution rather than a complete cure, but it was enough to keep us trying.
Have I told you that my husband has a problem with anxiety, or that he tends to be a bit of a hypochondriac? Well he does. So, you can imagine that two Fridays ago when he complained to me that his toe hurt, it was all I could to not to visibly roll my eyes. "You've probably got an ingrown toenail, or maybe an ant bite." I told him and totally blew him off.
Even at 2 a.m. when he woke me up to complain that the pain was all the way into his hip, I didn't really give it much credibility. I'm awakened quite often for minor complaints like stiff shoulders, aching backs, and sometimes even "I can't breathe" sort of things that always turn out to be nothing. So, I did my wifely duty and looked at the toe in the dim light of the room, confirmed that it was, in fact, swollen, and that the swelling was spreading up the foot and leg. Ok, so maybe he really did have something wrong this time.
I asked him if he wanted to go to the emergency room, or wait to find a doctor in the morning, all while dozing back off.
Next thing I know, it's morning, he's writing like he's been gut shot, and I'm thinking to myself, "yeah, it's infected, but come on!" I look him up a doctor's office that's open on Saturdays and send him packing-- alone-- across town. To my credit, I did have enough heart to send him with my car so that he didn't have to try and switch gears/push the clutch with his bad foot. Aren't I a good wife?
He calls me from the doctor's office to tell me that they want him to go straight to the emergency room. I tell him to come home first because he has the car with the car seat. Great wife, eh?
Long story short-- what I blew off as a bad toenail could have been fatal if neglected for even a few more hours. And I was left feeling more than a bit of that weight since I was the one that kept telling him to suck it up and stop acting like such a wuss.
The second night in the hospital it all hit me and I sort of had a bit of a breakdown. Wil and I talked, mostly I jabbered on and cried and he listened in a fever-induced half-sleep. It felt eerily like some sort of death-bed confession thing. And I realized that here I was, holding all these tiny little grudges against him, and even considering giving up on the relationship totally, but seeing him there, potentially close to death, made me realize how much I need and want him in my life... in our lives.
We spent the remiander of the time in the hospital working through some ugly stuff, forgiving each other over stupid things, making great plans for the future.
But then he was discharged, and home, and the first day was great. Then the second day was ok, then yesterday was tedious and back to the same sort of stuff as before the hospital incident. I'm trying, I really, really am, to be a better wife, to not be so selfish, to be content with him the way that he is, but it's tough and I can't do it without help from his end. Sure, he's the sick one, and he deserves a bit of a break, but I thought I'd get more than 3 days out of his renewed effort.
And so, my observation is this: Words are simply a Porta-Potty in this relationship: Cheap. temporary, and full of shit.
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