taking care

I don't want to become that Bitter Woman. You know who I'm talking about. The Woman who everyone cringes at when they see her because they never know what caustic words will come out of her mouth toward any unsuspecting man within earshot. Or every happy woman who compliments her husband, or every couples event the church plans, or anyone who has happiness about any sort of relationship in their life.

It's easy to dislike Her. The hard part, I'm realizing, is that I think it's probably quite easy to become Her.

I play mental ping-pong quite often these days. Berating myself for the times I trusted him; the many times I entrusted him with things of value in our life; the times I didn't question when I wanted to-or should have; the times we just moved on when I had this feeling of unrest. I should've listened to my heart, my gut, the Holy Spirit--whatever it was. I should've listened to it more. I thought that wasn't correct, or loving. I thought that I needed to show him I trusted him, which I interpreted as just doing what he wanted. And even though reading that makes me sound like Mrs. Milquetoast, I don't think I would characterize myself as spineless.

I had a voice in our marriage. Well, I had a voice in the sense that I spoke my mind. Looking back, that's all it was. Remember that philosophical question, "If a tree falls in the forest when no one is around, does it still make noise?"...or something like that. That question for me might be, "If the Mrs. speaks her mind and is not afraid to tell you exactly what she thinks, but you're too consumed with yourself and so mentally checked out that you can't decipher the words she's saying, do you still have to take them into account when making decisions that affect her?" I sometimes think I have probably been like that Far Side comic to him over the years---the one where the guy is talking to his dog, but all she hears is, "blahblahblahblah Ginger, blahblahblahblah Ginger".

I just heard the Bitterness.

I want to get over this hump. I'd like to be past this painful part of the process, but I'm not sure there's a way to fast forward through the hurt. Part of the hurt is recognizing how wounded I was--and am.

Weekly counseling is, no doubt, helping this, but truthfully, it's also unearthing a whole lot more garbage than I knew was there. I seem to have a Pavlovian response to walking into my counselor's office, but instead of salivating I tear up. Every raw emotion moves to the surface, and I either pour it out, using up every available kleenex in his office, or I try and intellectualize it and just talk around it. Some days he lets me intellectualize it. I know he knows I'm doing it--that I can't handle going there emotionally just then. Other days he pushes me to just trudge through it. So I do...crying copious amounts of tears in the process. I wish I could have known myself this well 12 years ago. I wonder if it would have made a difference.

If had been this strong a person--not a man-basher, but just a girl who knew herself well enough, and trusted herself enough to expect more---to demand more, I wonder if I would've married him in the first place.

The funny thing---not "haha" funny----is that I think all I really wanted was to be taken care of. I never felt taken care of...my parents weren't the nurturing type. They took care of needs, yes, but they didn't take care of the person I am. In more than 12 years of marriage, I don't know that I can think of a time when I felt taken care of. Not trying to be pitiful here, I'm just being honest. The thing I longed for most, the thing I needed most from my marriage Never. Even. Happened.