Oatmeal

In twenty minutes I will join a zoom call with my therapist and he will stare into his camera and say his opening line:

So what’s on your mind today?

And I am already wondering what to tell him that isn’t too negative.  Or isn’t too false.  I have to not think about what is on my mind most of the time because when I really stop and think about it I get upset and I have to push those feelings down to get through the day.  It is safer to think about the Obligations.

This morning I woke up at 6 because J was up, getting ready for a doctor appointment.  Bloodwork, ultrasound.  We are toward the end of yet another IVF cycle and it isn’t going that well.  Only a few eggs look like they are growing and could be retrieved.  She complains about this constantly.  She feels she is failing as a  woman.  It’s bad for her ego.  And she wants a child so, so badly.

She’s out of the house at six thirty and I think I’m going to get back to sleep but it takes a while and then I just doze and I’m up again at 7:30 and have to start the day.  I do the initial wake-the-fuck up medication routine:  coffee, NMN, lexapro.  It’s garbage day so I empty all the trash cans around the house.  There’s an empty bottle of wine in my office — I’ve been having a couple of glasses here and there, returning to bad habits — it’s a reminder that I’m not super happy in general.  I stuff it into the garbage can because I don’t want my wife to see it in the recycling bin.  I try to justify it to myself, nothing wrong with a little wine and so on, but I know it’s not great for me to be doing this, I know where that path leads.  I get it all out and realize there’s also shit in the fridge that has to go:  old leftovers that are becoming fuzzy science projects.  I scrape old rancid salmon and thick lentil soup and pasta sauce and chick peas into another trash bag, then get the tupperware into the dishwasher.  I realize the sink is full and there are dishes from last night everywhere so I stuff that in the dishwasher too, turn it on, go outside into the rain, place the trash bags on the side of the road where they’ll be picked up in an hour by the town.

J comes home at this moment, her car turning into the driveway.  She smiles at me and I briefly feel ok.  We walk inside and she tells me that they’re having trouble drawing blood from her arm because it’s been used too much.  Scarring from the repeated blood draws required by two plus years of IVF.  In our kitchen, I hug her and feel her relax a little.

She asks if there’s oatmeal.  No, I said, I’ve been cleaning all morning.  She says she has to leave in ten minutes can I make some and I said it takes 6 minutes and it will be boiling hot so you can’t eat it right away and she says fine just forget it, in a huff.  you usually have oatmeal for me why don’t you have oatmeal.

J, if you need oatmeal you have to communicate it to me.  I can’t read your mind, I tell her.

It’s too late.  She’s irritated with me.  Nothing I do is good enough anymore.

Last night I cooked and she got back from acupuncture and inhaled food and then I asked if we could watch a show and she’s like jesus I just need some time for myself and then she starts looking at her phone, social media, what people are doing, random people, people I don’t know.  Memes.  There is one of a dog banging on a bowl because dinner is late and he wants to let the owner know.  this is like me J says.

Oh I thought you needed time for yourself, now it seems like you need to be social with me.   It is the wrong thing to say but I am irritated.  J is running the show.  J does what J wants to do and doesn’t care what I am doing or how I am feeling.  J is put-upon.  I am sitting next to her on the couch working on my laptop, trying to do our taxes, because she can’t be bothered with it.  Now I have to look at dog memes.

This weekend we will probably go to IVF and they will probably get zero eggs or even if they get two they won’t get fertilized, or they won’t grow, and it will be misery, she will tell me over and over again that she is a failure, why is it so easy for other people.

This is our relationship now.  I do things for her and get very little in return.  She feels her life is the hardest, I feel like my life is — well, if not the hardest, then the one with the least importance.  It is the J show.  I am a supporting cast member.  She cannot see past herself to see me right now and I am having a difficult time with it.  I am boring, I am steady, I am always OK, I am there to read her mind and serve her whatever she needs.

Just not oatmeal.