Post 12: I am not his mother

Post 12 I entered marriage a bit naïve, maybe due to my age, maybe because we already had a kid together and I thought, “How bad could it be?” Haha… I remember my mom telling me at some point during the first period of hardship that it was normal to fall in and out of love with your spouse. I’m pretty sure I scoffed and questioned how that was even possible. No, but really. How can you go from loathing someone back to love? I still can’t give you a “how,” but what I can tell you is you can’t go around it, you can’t go over it, you can’t go under it, you have to go through it. It would have been summer 2005, so very newly living together. I remember getting a call from Terrace late one night. He had been out of town working -- if there wasn’t a long weekend, he would be home for a weekend every three weeks – so not home very often. We had been trying to get his debt paid off and get his credit in a place where the bank would actually give us a mortgage. While my credit was good, no one cared because I didn’t have any income. He informs me in said phone call that he had just lost his/our entire pay cheque in the machines. (sigh, ugh, f*$&) I’m not even sure I could put into words how I felt other than nauseous, anger, and a deep sadness. It was late enough that it was dark outside in whatever summer month we were in. Charli was sleeping. I was sitting on our front steps sobbing and wishing there was a way to get a cigarette and maybe some wine. I remember contemplating whether I could leave Charli sleeping at home by herself and run to the store. Could I call a cab and would they go get it for me? (I think today I could have managed to have someone deliver those things 😉 ) But a “good” mom wouldn’t leave her sleeping baby for cigarettes and wine, so I didn’t. I don’t remember the aftermath of that incident. So, I mean, we paid the bills and didn’t starve or die; it all worked out. But for me it was the first time in our relationship where I didn’t feel safe, protected, or taken care of, and I felt stuck. There may have been a deal struck that night in which it was promised that machine play would never occur again. This may be something we’ve continued to deal up until the last few years. Betrayal and deceit can occur in many forms, and I would feel so broken. My lesson would be that it was not my job to tell Terrace what he could and couldn’t do (I will admit this is still difficult lol). It also wasn’t my job to judge the action, but to find compassion. I could tell you and have told you that one of my greatest fears was being judged, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t do my fair share of it. Through my own figuring myself out, I started to see a pattern in our relationship. Things would be going well, we’d be sailing along, and then Terrace would do something that would create a fight. My theory was that he didn’t think he deserved to be loved or be happy or have a great marriage. So when things were going well, he’d sabotage it. (I will admit I’ve also done my fair share of sabotaging as well. I can spark a fight out of nothing). When I started to realize that his actions were not actually about me but about him, this allowed us to talk sh*t out and move on without our days of silence and dirty looks. Because it’s so ironic – today’s song: The Gambler – Kenny Rogers 😂🤷‍♀️

Mar 10, 2020, 6:33 AM