If You’d Never Been Born, Then You Might Be An Isn’t! An Isn’t Has No Fun At All. No, He Disn’t.

It feel like I haven’t been able to write for a long time.  I have been unbelievably busy and I am also trying to prioritize my time with my wife over the time I spend writing.  So because she has been having more free time I am spending it with her when I normally would write.

I don’t even know where to begin.  I wrote about the concert, me sleeping and feeling okay the next day.  I guess I will begin at the beginning of the week.  This week has has been quite a ride but I have seemed mellow to all around me.  I know if I do this then my wife isn’t on edge, my kids are more happy (or I perceive them that way) and it makes the day better for everyone.  I maybe panicking on the inside, but I am a cool cat on the outside.  This week also held my wife’s birthday which I will get to in a bit but it added another level of stress.

Monday was a pretty good day up until towards the end of the day.  We were getting along great and I was happy that things were moving in a more normal way.  Well, my new employer asked me to come to a meeting that night to meet with him and my old employer.  I am kind of the bridge between the two.  Anyways as I told my wife that I needed to go to this meeting and what it was for she got a little upset. Why?  Well, my former employer owes me a considerable amount of money.  He has barely paid me anything since April, which makes living very difficult.  I have been working very hard to stretch every penny that we earn and I am constantly reminding him that he needs to pay me.  My wife understands how hard it is for us right now and she told me that I need to make him understand how much it is affecting my family and everyone else besides me.  He is aware of this as it is not something I sugar coat with him, but I am also not an asshole.  It is really hard to get me to that level, but I can be frank and to the point.

I think she does not believe that I am doing enough to get the money.  The problem is I know he doesn’t have it.  I am going to take him a promissory note in a week or so laying out conditions and interest on the amount of money he still owes me.  While that will help in the long run, but it doesn’t help right now.  So she got upset, she did not yell, but definitely was not an inside voice she was using to tell me that I need to be more aggressive and basically brash with him.  So I can see in her eyes this is where I am failing for her.  She wants me to storm in make the guy feel like shit and magically make all the money appear.  The only problem is I know the guy.  If I do it that way I get much less than I am getting now.  So that approach does not work.  She does not see it like that because she hates the guy (I am not his biggest fan either), but being professional about how I deal with it helps more than anything.  But it doesn’t matter.  I am make the money in the family and when I am working and it is not coming in, it gets real difficult.  She constantly thinks we are missing out on certain things for our kids.  I understand why she thinks that, but my kids have it 1000 times better than I did.  She is still putting me into her fathers mold and I will never be him.  I won’t have a 9-5 job and spend evenings with my kids and have dinner at 5:30 every night.  Would I like that?  Yea, but it is unrealistic on so many different levels.  The main problem is our kids schedules won’t even allow for that type of life.  So in the end I will never be what she wants or expects me to be.

It really topped off my night.  I went to my meeting and got a drink or two when I probably shouldn’t have.  Especially since I knew I could not let it affect the next day which was my wife’s birthday.  But sleep was not coming and so I knew it was going to take a ton of effort to make it a great day for her.

So after my mandatory 3 hours of sleep I laid in bed waiting for her to go to work.  Once she left I got up and started my day.  I had stuff that needed to be done.  Last, year we were pretty low on each other and her birthday was not much more than just another passing day.  I felt shitty about it, I always have, so I knew I needed this one to be better.  Then again that wasn’t going to be hard when the bar was set so low.  More importantly I wanted her to feel special all day.  I woke up the kids and got them going for the day and gave them a cute card for them to sign and to write a special message to her.  I had got 3 other cards I was going to use through out the day.  She was working until noon and I had counseling from 12 to 1 so I wasn’t going to see her until close to 2.

I went to her work and wrote a message about how much I loved her and how I knew I did not make her feel special last year so I was going to try this year.  So this card told her that I thought she was special and a few reasons why.  It also told her to go home and take a long deserved nap.  I then put it on her car so she would get it when she came out of work.

I went to counseling, it was a bloody mess, but I pulled myself together and put on the happy face and went home to make her feel special.  I had a few other things planned and I gave her the choice of having a family day or a couples day.  She chose a family day so we were going to go do mini-golf and go-carts, come home watch a movie together and then cake and bed.  It would be a fun relaxing day.  Unfortunately the weather did not want to cooperate as it decided to rain.  So mini-golf and go-carts were out.  I remembered that there was a event downtown that was supposed to be fun and family oriented.  They were supposed to have stuff for the kids and it was indoors.   So we headed out to look.  When we got there we saw right away this would be a 20 min activity.  I walked them in and then went quickly back out to the car to place her second card of the day.  In this one I wrote how happy I am to have her as my wife and how special of a mother she is and will always be.  I am just grateful for her to be the mother of my children.  I then slipped back in and finished the 20 min of “fun”.

We got back out to the car and she got her card and loved it.  We then decided to go get a RedBox and go home and make homemade pizza as it is something everyone in our family loves.  So dinner and a movie at home.  We after we made the pizza and it was cooking the kids gave her their present.  It was just a really nice pair of sandals that I knew she wanted.  I do pay attention every once in a while.  They gave her the card they signed and their present.  We both don’t like to do presents on birthday’s for ourselves so I am sure she assumed that was all there was.  We had put together her favorite cake and ate it while we watched the movie.

After the movie I placed the last card in our bed.  This card told her about how much I missed the girl I fell in love with 26 years ago.  I know she is still in their and I am dedicated to help bring her back.  I told her about the things that I love about her and how even now I wonder what she saw in that 16 year old boy all the way back then.  And how all I wanted back then was her love and affection and it really has not changed much in all these years. I still just want her love and affection.  I want her attention and her approval in all that I do.  These are still what I want all these years later.  And more importantly these are the things I want to give her.  I want to show her and make her feel loved, wanted, desired, needed, and just great as a person.  I want to make her feel these thing from me because she deserves them.  Then as we were in bed I gave her my present.  I got her a matching wedding band to the new ring she bought me.  I told her that I thought she could wear it along side her other wedding ring.  I wanted her to see that I want to be in this with her to the end.  I wanted us to be matching just like we have been for most of the last 26 years.  I wanted her to look down at her hand and see us again.  The new us, the better us.  We finished the night off with a few “Fireworks” and then fell asleep in each others arms.

She still had to work the next morning and since I am working from home it is easy to sleep in, not that I actually do as I usually wake up before she does but I lay in bed until she leaves and then I start my day.  Wednesday was busy.  I had a lot of work and running around to do and all the feelings that I have been bottling up wanted to come out for some reason so I was a royal anxious mess on the inside.   The person everyone saw was not that person though.  I was back at pretending I am me.  I have another meeting with my new boss to go over a bunch of things and then we meet to drive to a meeting later that night a little hour away.  So I probably saw my wife for about 1.5 hours all day.  I still wanted her to feel special even after her birthday so I went and put another note on her car while she was at work.  Well I did not get back until 12:30 am and then could not sleep.  I was up answering a few important emails until 3:30 and then I decided to try and sleep.  After about 30 min of reading I finally fell asleep.

I woke by six and just laid there for a while.  I had a million things to get done and I had to find the energy to get them all completed.  I finally got up and started working by 8:30.  I worked straight through until 3:30 or 4:00.  My wife had counseling and a lunch date so I did not see her until then and we tried to take a walk.  We got 5 minutes in and we both got phone calls that made us got right back home.  She was going out with a friend for a birthday Mani/Pedi and I needed to finish two things I was waiting to finish until I got the right paperwork.  Well it came in and my boss wanted to pick it all up completed in less than an hour.  So I got back to work and finished it all.  It has been a long day and my anxiety has been building all week.  I was really close to panicking a few times today but got it under control.

My wife could tell that something was making me anxious besides work and asked about it.  I just said that counseling days make me feel all weird and extremely anxious.  I am not sure why, but it does.  She was given homework to do which is funny because she has wanted it all along so she feels she is making progress and now she is rethinking that aspect.  I wasn’t sure about her homework and every thing she said because it seemed like it was focused us.  I do not want this because her counseling is for her not us.  I want her to work on herself and that is why she wanted to go in.  But it seems like she only talks about “us” when she shares what they did.  I said something about it and she said that part of her is “us”.  She asked me if I do couple stuff with my guy.  I said I don’t.  We talk a little about us but always in the context about me getting better as an individual.  Now I am worried she is in it for the wrong reason and she is not ready to work on herself.  She needed to buy a couple of books for the home work.  Now she wants me to do it with her.  Who knows?  Maybe…

Now here is a trend I have noticed and am beginning to resent it.  My best days are the days we have sex or the day after.  For me, having the physical reassurance helps but I don’t know if that is all.  We are getting more and more infrequent again, but it is mostly my fault.  I am working crazy so I have not found a time to make it happen.  But then again she is not pushing for it or making it a priority I of course, so we go know where.  She is also back to letting my youngest sleep in our bed so it is not like I am getting the chance at a decent hour anyways.  Just writing it makes me feel extremely selfish again.  How can I let sex affect me so much?  It is just frustrating. It make me feel like she is avoiding me again.   I think that I really am headed down that dark path again.  I just and trying to hold on, it is just hard.  Nearly Impossible, and if I wasn’t born it would make it easier.  Who would care anyway besides my wife and kids.

So now what?  I have written a stinking book here and got no where.  This must be very anticlimactic.  I need to finish both my stories, “the beginning” and D-Day #2.  Maybe tomorrow.  I am going to actually try and sleep before 3 tonight.

If you’d never been born, then you might be an Isn’t! An Isn’t has no fun at all. No, he disn’t. – Dr. Seuss