On despair.

It is difficult to type with blurry vision, but my eyes are so full of tears.  At least I can touch type, and the general shape of the text tells me I’ve typed what I’ve meant to.

My marriage is crumbling.  But this is not new.

Sometimes I ignore it.  Sometimes, I choose to live within the spaces of good, even if those spaces are farther and farther away.  There is good.  Sometimes, there is good.  Sometimes, I focus on my four children and I tell myself that when they are grown, I will be gone.  I just have to hang in there for eight more years.  I’ve already done almost fourteen, what’s eight more?

And then there are the times when I feel like I will nearly burst from the frustration and anger.  There are times when I want to explode from lack of sex, lack of communication.  We are rarely on the same page.  I told him tonight, we do nothing well anymore.  We don’t parent our children together well anymore.  We aren’t active in the bedroom, but this has been for ages.  Years. Probably a decade.  We don’t problem solve well.  We don’t communicate well.  I truly do not understand him, and at moments like this, I don’t even want to.

His insatiable optimism is foreign to me.  It has always been.  It has gotten us into trouble more times than I can count.  It has caused me to replace my own common sense with his. I’ve done things that I haven’t agreed with and later regretted.  He is capable of ignoring far more than I think is right.  He can step over so much, but I see what he is stepping over.  I feel like I am the only adult in this house sometimes.  I feel like I see more clearly what he’s stepping over and when I point it out, all it causes is more frustration.

I am not alone in feeling like this.  When I tell close friends, or my mother, what day-t0-day life is all about, they are surprised I am upright.  I’ve been made promises of help if I leave him.

But he will never leave.  He will never give up, even if he should know that continuing to try isn’t working. I told him tonight that I can try as hard as I want to get an A in Statistics but it will never happen.  No matter how hard I try, I am not smart enough to do it. My “trying” just isn’t good enough.

Sometimes, it’s just not enough.

He doesn’t think so. He thinks as long as you are trying, or purporting to try, then you are making progress.  Even if the wheels of the car dig deeper and deeper into the ground – even if the tread of the tires is burning away – if you are still pressing the gas pedal, you are making progress.

We are not making progress.

I do not understand him.  I don’t understand how he sees the world or how he thinks as he does.  I can’t possibly agree with things that I fundamentally do not agree with.

The latest seems trivial but to me, it amplifies all that we have been struggling with.  We planned a trip a few weeks ago to New Orleans. It was meant to be a surprise for our children.  At the time, my  husband was working at a job he hated (I’ve talked about it) but it was a job.  He also had an opportunity possibly in New York that was shaking down.  Having been at his hated job for a month, and realizing that it was possible that he might get another better opportunity, we discussed taking the children on a surprise trip as a way to celebrate one of two things: Either Daddy’s “new” (hated) job or possibly the New York job.  We booked it and agreed that he would tell the hated job that he had already planned a trip prior to starting.  They’d likely accommodate him and then we’d go.  Perhaps by then he’d have the new job and it wouldn’t matter – either way, after months of uncertainty and unemployment, we could surprise our children with something nice.  So many months of struggle and lack.  Whether it was a good job or not, he was employed and we would finally tell them.

He was supposed to tell the hated job this weeks ago.  But he didn’t.  And he has no reason why he didn’t.  He can’t tell me what possessed him not to tell the hated job that he would be gone for a week.  Of course, when I realized this – days after the trial that found my own sister guilty of assaulting me – I was stunned.  Now it was too late.  The children had already submitted trip requests for their school.  We had hinted at “something” for Monday.  And he was sitting there, looking his usual exhausted self, telling me he hadn’t told the hated job about his plans.

What was he going to do?  Quit?  No paycheck and then go on vacation?  Did that make any sense to anyone but him?  The NY job was still in play but who knows what they will do.  He hasn’t heard from them yet, so who knows.  I just stared at him that night.  Monday I think.  How could you….what are you thinking?  We can’t go on vacation if you haven’t arranged it with your employer!  You can’t go on vacation when you don’t have anymore paychecks!  WHO DOES THAT?

And it is just like that, in a blink.  Right there.  He thought it was okay.  He wanted to “think of ideas”.  At what point do you realize THERE ARE NO ANSWERS and you have fucked us?  You can’t go on this vacation!  Am I supposed to go by myself?  With four children and no ACL?  With a skin disease that is causing me grief right now?  Are you kidding me?  Are you this irrational?

The answer is yes.  He is that irrational.  I am the only grown up and it’s killing me.

I told one of my friends about this and she got so upset, she started to just blow up.  She actually called me back later to apologize and reiterate that she supported me.  That she couldn’t imagine being where I am.  That she saw what a decent guy my husband was, and a good father, but she couldn’t imagine being married to him.  I answered that I couldn’t either.

I can’t. I just can’t.

I love him (in a way), I care about him, I respect his role as my children’s father, but I cannot do life with him. I don’t know how to stay married to an irrational, child-like, spiritually bankrupt person.

But I don’t have an answer or a solution to any of it.