This year started out great. I was starting my 3rd year at a job I enjoyed. We had decided to pull our son out of public high school so we were researching alternatives, which I knew would ultimately be the best thing for him. (Long story short, he wasn’t doing well mentally or academically and suffering depression in addition to the regular growing pangs of being in the 10th grade.) And, although I sometimes wanted to ring his neck, I still felt relatively secure in my marriage. Sure, we were spending less time together. And sure, I was getting lonely more often. But that’s just cabin fever because of a long cold winter, right?
For the next few months I kept busying myself with diamond dotting, or cross stitching. I’d have the latest podcast in the background, or play old reruns of Golden Girls or Seinfeld. I’d shrug off any festering loneliness as cabin fever, or winter blues, or my “monthly moodies.” My husband and I would talk about how we missed watching TV or movies together, but then we’d admit that we just don’t have the same taste in those things anymore. And then we’d just go right back to following our routines. Me working far too much because I need the external validation of a nearly-emptied inbox. And him retreating to his Man Cave to work on yet another novel that he’ll passionately write, but will only half-heartedly try to get published. He will complain all night about the day job he hates and feels stuck at, but his fear of success/failure stops him from doing anything substantive to change it. And his distrust of therapy won’t let him get help to deal with the fear of success/failure. So instead, he runs away. Sure, he’s still in the same house. But he’ll get lost re-watching a fave Sci-Fi TV show, or movie. Or he’ll play a video game. And in the process, intentional or not, he’s sacrificed time he could be re-connecting with his wife and son.
It wasn’t until sometime in April this year that something snapped inside. I don’t know if it was something from a TV show that triggered it, or a song lyric, but it’s like a switch got flipped and I just kept thinking “why am I staying in a marriage where I’m as lonely as when I was single?”
The problem is, I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust my emotions. Not very often, at least. I don’t know if I can trust that this is a legitimate feeling, or just a self-destructive notion that I’ll live to regret if I act on it. And – because not trusting your own feelings isn’t spicy enough – I am in pre-menopause and the hormones have made me so erratic that I’ve had to start a 2nd anti-depressant to make the 1st one do its job! So I’m really not trusting myself right now.
