Every Moment Counts

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Every morning at 5am, I send my husband off to work. Much like every other wife I don’t know what is going to happen from day to day. Will he be safe? Will the day be productive? All in all these are things that I obsess over as some might say. The truth is that I am very focused when it comes to time and what it does to every day life. Is there enough time to do what we want to, have to, or even to live in the moments in between those times? Only time will tell…

Last night was one of those occasions. He comes in, doesn’t even kiss me hello, and goes directly into bed and accuses me for “having put a guilt trip on him into kissing me” while he is briefly awake. So then, I stay up half the night, because believe me at this time it’s all I can sleep, thinking about how our lives have changed over the past eight years. I love my husband and I would never be as foolish as to think that our marriage was changing on the account of one kiss. But your mind tends to wonder when you spend a lot of time alone with your thoughts while everyone that you know is out there having a life while you are sitting at home and your partner only spends about an hour with you per day. From what we have all come to accept, society has lead us to think that a kiss can make or break a relationship, and yes ladies and gentlemen, I was in that place last night. Lately, we have spent so little time together on account of his schedule that I really am starting to get the impression that our marriage is changing. That based on something as simple and yet as complex as time that our lifetime commitment was and or is fading. For hours, I went around steamed thinking that our relationship had changed because my husband had not pressed his lips yup against mine for any amount of time. I talked to friends as the night went on about what this may mean. Was he still in love with me? Had his mind changed? Come to find out, he had a cold that he had contracted from a child that was riding in the back seat and coughing as they traveled. Here is my question though.. Would it had killed him to tell me that? Is communicating really that painful?

Love

On our wedding day, a very wise man named Orlando told me that at the end of the day, brothers and sisters move on, parents die, and friends have other interests. You and your husband, each other is all you have. You know, he is a very wise man. Each other is all we have. And over the past 8 years or so, my husband and I, we have held tightly onto each other no matter what. I love him.. that is all I know. I find myself, even as angry as I get at our situation and his schedule, taking care of everything I possibly can so that he doesn’t have to worry about anything extra and focus on his six day a week, twelve hour a day job. Does that seem like love, or like I’m trying to prevent conflict..?

The Phone Call..

He’s been gone for over twelve hours. I know he is working, and I understand that work is work and that when you are busy at work, your life outside of it pretty much does not matter until the clock stops running. Most of the day I have been pretty ok, but after about six hours I start to wonder. I start to think about how he is doing, if he’s ok. If he has made any money. I also start to wonder about why he hasn’t called me all damn day! Not even a text message since 5:26am!!

So then he gets home around 6:15pm. Walks in like nothing is wrong. Without any reason as to why for the first time in 8 blessed years I didn’t get any communication from him. Then he waltzes in as though things are ok, kisses me and says let’s go see a movie. Yes I was pissed. So, we check on movie times and we head out. As we are leaving our neighborhood, I tell him that yes this situation is hard, but that I will work to get through it. We have never been in this type of situation, so it will take time for things to sink in. To which he replies that he understands but that I have unresolved issues and that there was nothing he could do, so that he was not going to get too deep into the situation because there is nothing he could do about it . He said that if he gets too deeply involved that he would only be feeding the fire.. To which I said to him that he didn’t have to be involved and that I was just letting him know how I felt about it. That he didn’t have to give me a solution.

The rest of the night, things went ok. A little cold, but ok. When we got out of the car, he gave me a long, tight hug, to which I responded half way. He kept looking at my left hand, wedding ring missing, but engagement ring still there. No further discussion needed about that, we have already discussed it, but I see out of the corner of my eye that it does affect him. I know it may seem mean, and believe me, I apologize if it does, but the thing is you as a married person have to understand that those things are important. Anyway, another story for another day. Where were we? Oh yeah, we got our tickets and went to the movie. Throughout this film, we were exchanging pleasantries, about the movie while trying to decide how to hold hands even though we were in two entirely different places emotionally. Once the movie ended, we discussed it a little bit. I told him that it made me laugh. I said that it was the first time in almost a week that I had laughed. That statement even hurt me when I heard it, but I have to be strong and nonchalant about it, so we went on about our business. He didn’t say much about it… It’s ok, he didn’t have to.

We went home, and it was ok. We talked a little more freely about general things, I was almost over whatever was bothering me throughout the day. I was almost to the point of accepting that when he is at work, I will not hear from him. It was something to get used to, but I was going to be ok. As we pulled up to the house out of nowhere, maybe I don’t remember what we were even talking about ,he very casually tells me that he made time to call a friend from work because he had called him a few times during the day to talk about the stock market. To this I just in a very soft voice said, that just made it worse. He had time to socialize, but not to even say I love you to me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not as big a bitch as I currently appear, I am just trying to understand. We are , or used to be , very close. So close that we had never in eight years gone more than a few hours without communicating with each other , and now all of a sudden his number one goes to number three…So, let me get this straight, his friend leaves him a message and he calls him back to talk about the stock market , and me his wife is sitting at home wondering how things are and doesn’t interrupt him and I get squat?!?!?! That is crap!!!!! I guess when you are on the clock courtesy is selective and money takes precedence. The wife can wait and wonder, but the stock market gets his precious time. It’s ok, things happen the way they supposed to for a reason.

The next morning, he was casual about everything, then he comes and lays down next to me and says that he will try to promote into something better as soon as humanly possible and kisses me. I kissed him back with the same softness and intention that he kissed me with. However, I think that it was obvious to him that our feelings for each other are not mutual at the moment. “It’s ok, the feelings, they will return “ was the expression on his face when he pulled back from kissing me and got up from the bed. As he lifted his body from the bed, I told him”tell James I said hi”, to which he replied “I just talked to him for two minutes”, and I said “ok”. He then proceeds to grab his belongings for the day as we go over the list of things that he needs, puts his work shirt on, and as he is about to leave the bedroom, he reassures me that he will “try to make time to call or text me today, at least to check in”. He turns off the light, and off he goes…. Lord protect him and help him deal with a crazed wife while trying to be productive….. We will see how it works out for yet another day….