The Argument
The argument went a little like this: I told my husband “I was looking at cars today”. David turned the page in the book he was reading and said, “Oh?”. I responded: “I don’t understand why a used Toyota Land Cruiser is so much more expensive than a used Range Rover. That makes no sense! It’s like twice as much!” He pauses a moment and says, “Well, all used cars aren’t the same so you want to be careful. There’s a lot of crap out there.” I decide I don’t like his tone. So I shift a little in bed and retort: “You mean crappy, like the used Mercedes we just bought?” I know he loves that car. He says “the Mercedes is a good car. It’s a good dealership — you should look there.” I respond defensively. “I am looking there. And elsewhere. I’m not going to run out and buy a crappy car. Just trust me.”
David can tell I’m annoyed, which annoys him. “I do trust you, I just think we need to be careful.” In my mind, his insistence suggests all kinds of assumptions, so I repeat “just trust me.” He says “I do trust you.” We go back and forth a few more times. Increasingly, his tone doesn’t match his words. The exchange — which ceased to be a conversation several minutes ago — goes downhill from there. I tell him not to challenge my judgment. He tells me to stop needling him. His voice gets louder, which pisses me off since our 16 year old is just outside our bedroom watching tv, and I point that out. But he’s already crossed the threshold of caring at that point, so he drops a few f-bombs as he insists that I stop talking. My voice is deliberately calm, because I’m trying to get him to stop, and finally, he storms out of the room and goes downstairs. I’m relieved. I think I asked him to turn the light off on his way out. He doesn’t. So I just go to sleep, lights on and all.
David’s mom is dying. She has late stage cancer and it’s been a long time coming. Still, he is very affected, and on top of it, he is overwhelmed by some complicated family drama. Some of it is related to her illness and the toll it is taking on the people around her. Some of it is related to family history. All of it is coming to a head right now. On top of that, he pulled his back the previous weekend, a long weekend, I might add, which meant that he spent many hours in bed, with nothing to do but think. When the things to think about torment you and make you angry, time is your worst enemy. So for David, the stress is at its peak and he’s forgetful and short-tempered. He recognizes he’s handling things badly, but it’s hard to take control when so much of it is out of your hands, and home is the one place he wants to feel he can lose his shit and not have it be held against him. So I try to be patient and open and compassionate. Usually we do fine. But it doesn’t help when your spouse is navigating her own struggles.
My confidence these days is at an all time low. Being on sabbatical is not as fun as I hoped it would be. I have distracted myself since the start, and my posts on social media make sabbatical look like a blast (#sabbaticaldays). But truth be told, I’ve just been filling my time with things that I hope might pave the way to financial security after the sabbatical year is finished, moving from one million-dollar idea to the next. That means I haven’t had any real down time. I have taken courses, signed up for webinars, filled my schedule with coaching sessions, applied for jobs (been rejected), and continued to stress about finances. What I really want to do is decorate my house, write, read, exercise, watch tv and breathe.
School started in September. That means everyone my house has a daily purpose. As a result, I have felt the need to be busy. I have not allowed myself the chance to enjoy ME time, sleep in or get bored. My mom has gone so far as to send me money so that I can stop worrying about finances, and that brings with it a whole set of unexpected feelings of guilt. I struggle to find my footing almost daily and several times in the last couple of weeks I have wondered if I am bordering depression. I find that when I coach others, I sometimes see myself in them, and it makes the sessions confusing. As a result, there are moments when I begin to feel I can do nothing right.
So I focus on the easy things: laundry, dinner, putting together breakfast for my youngest son… taking the occasional walk with my dog, and doing 7 minute workouts. These things seem to sustain me, and they do give me joy. But I struggle to stay in the moment, and when I start to think about my future, I become anxious. So now that I have enough money in the bank, I need to sit back and just stop. And allow nothing to happen. And that’s hard because I have always been a doer. Doers just don’t know how to do nothing.
So combine my emotional roller coaster with Dave’s heightened family drama and we’re a couple of ticking time bombs. To be honest, it’s a wonder we don’t argue more. Maybe there’s some good in all of this. We are learning to give each other space and time, and a lot of extra support. When we were younger, a good fight would scare us. Carrying the baggage of failed first marriages, we would both sometimes worry that a fight might be a sign of impending doom. Today, we might both be a mess at this moment in our lives, but we are older and wiser. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing that we got mad at each other. It opened each of our eyes to the depth of one another’s respective struggles, and that’s good. We apologized this morning, each of us taking responsibility for our own assumptions and reactions and we committed to doing better.
And we keep moving. Like we always do.
