Sixteen

Saying something out loud does not necessarily make it so. When A comes home from work and asks me if I had a good day, and I say yes, who is it really hurting that I've lied to him? Me? A? Would it be more hurtful to A if I told him the truth? That I sat around the house all day with a miserable empty brain, wondering what I should be doing, wondering why I did not go back to bed the minute he left for work that morning, with not enough energy or desire to even turn on the TV? Does he really need to know that I sat for hours, sulking in unprovoked and unsubstantiated anger, at my past, at life, at fate, at the happiness gods who forgot about me long ago? Yesterday found me spinning my wheels, as always, and accomplishing nothing. Running household errands gets me out of my prison long enough to pick up A's dress shirts and pants from the dry cleaner because I am so useless I can't iron them properly, to pick up more food for the cats because I'm so self-centered I've let them almost run out of it, but then it's back to the dungeon. More hours of staring at the wall, trying to decide what to do because there is so much that needs to be done, but never doing anything because I can never decide where to begin. I started taking St. John's Wort a few days ago, because I've always read it's for "mild" depression, which I'm self-diagnosing for myself. Add that to the mix of pain medication and sleeping pills I take every day, and we'll see how or if it helps any. I don't want to be deliriously, bounce-off-the-walls happy, I just want to feel normal and balanced. I try to do all the things I read in the health magazines to combat mild depression- exercise, get enough sleep, get outside for sunshine, take vitamins, stroke the pets. Some days I think it's working, and I feel better, but some days I just want to mentally check out. A is out of town on business today, and he said he will be home later than usual. I feel almost relieved, as I did last night when he said he was going to hang out with his buddy after work for an hour or so, since we are leaving for vacation soon and they won't see each other again for a bit. Maybe he avoids coming home lately, I don't know, I hope not and yet I wouldn't blame him. He's always worked long days, 12 hours, but it seems since we moved here last year and he started his new position, he works even longer days. And I don't understand, because now he's an even bigger boss with more people under him. Why can't he delegate, and come home to me? Why do I whine about him not coming home early, yet say I feel relieved when he comes home late? It doesn't make any sense. I miss him during the day and want him home, but when he's not here I'm super okay with it, or do I just convince myself of that in order to fight against the loneliness? Vacation starts in a little over 48 hours, and I will be surrounded by A and family for five days and five nights. I am not sure I will survive, but on the outside everyone will just see me having a nice time, relaxing on the beach, engaging with relatives, shopping for clothes, going out to eat, hanging out at the BBQ's, going out on the boat. All the things a normal person would do on vacation, all the things that are expected out of me, but for much of that time there will be no great, true happiness behind the motions and the smiles and the laughs. But not one of them will know it, so what does it matter? Isn't it more important that the family thinks I'm happy, than for me to actually be happy? Only A will know it, recognize it, later on at night when we're finally alone in our own bedroom at the beach house, when I can sigh deeply and let down my guard and allow the smile to finally fade from my face. He will know it then, and ask me what's wrong, and I will answer nothing I'm just tired. It's sometimes difficult for me to go back and forth between my two blogs, because they are so different. My other blog, which I've been writing for some time now, presents me as the epitome of excitement and happiness and shows me as the joyful wife and homemaker, and blogger friend who posts lots of fun photos and has tons of cute widgets with bright colors all over my page, and I leave encouraging and humorous comments on all my blog friends' posts. Then I come over here and post what is really on my mind, and I've left this blog plain and unassuming for a reason. Complete anonymity and freedom. I am following a few blogs here, but I don't intend to ever leave comments, and I don't intend to respond if I ever get comments on this page. I'm not looking to engage in conversation with friends on this blog. I'm not even hoping to get comments, because I'm not wanting moral support or understanding. If you read me, that is okay, I wouldn't be writing it here instead of the pages of a spiral notebook journal if I didn't have expectations that someone might read it. But I am only here to work things out for myself, to put in writing what's in my head, so I can go back and look at it a few days or weeks later, and to maybe one day figure it all out, to have that light bulb go off suddenly over my aching head. I can't put a finger on when I started feeling this way, unhappy, loss of emotions, loss of interest. Was it when I married X, or when I started to gain monumental weight and felt gross about myself, or when I hurt my back and started down the dark road of chronic pain, or when I gave up my job and moved away with A to this hick town where I now spend my days all alone? I don't know. It may be that all of these things have slowly compounded throughout the years, to lead me to this point in my life. How does a wife tell a husband that she is so bad off in her head that on some days she doesn't even take a shower until an hour before he comes home for the evening? That she doesn't even care when he comes home, that he IS home? How do I tell A that the real reason I didn't clean the house is not because of my back pain, but because I just really don't care that the carpet is dirty? That the real reason I overspend is because I feel dead inside and that each time I'm hoping that the next new pair of earrings or the $300 purse will make me feel better about myself? That the hundreds of dollars worth of flowers I insisted on planting in the garden when we moved here are now a laborious chore to tend to that I have come to hate and don't care if they die? I started a gratitude journal some time back, I know it is hokey but I thought it could help me. Five things a day, that's all I made myself write. Number one on my list every day was that A came home to me. I used to write it thinking I meant that he wasn't killed in a car crash, or didn't have a heart attack at work, that he came home to me alive. Now I am starting to think I mean I am grateful he just came home to me at all, that he didn't finally say to hell with it, that he didn't give up on me quite yet, that he decided I was worth loving and living with. I am tinkering with the idea of trying to start another novel. I've written so many of them, but they were all back when I was in my 20's and still living at home. I got rejection letters from many publishers, but at least I tried to get them published. Maybe now, over 20 years later, my inner voice has changed and I can write something more meaningful than the fluffy historical romances I tried to write back then. It seems as though people are now more accepting of dark or sad, truthful stories about women, about life. Wish I could pen a best-selling spy thriller about a manly secret agent and get rich from it, but that's just not what I'm about. They say write what you know best. For me, it's the secret painful life of a housewife stuck out in the country alone. Don't know if anyone would want to read that. But maybe it would be therapeutic for me to write it all out in novel format, instead of daily posts on this blog, where my readership seems to be zero so far.