Proceed at your own risk. You can always tell I'm tired when I tell you things you don't need to know and my punctuation leaves something to be desired. Or when I tell you about a quarter of what's on my mind and it makes little sense as a result.
Something to be desired. Yes. There's the theme for this post.
Sometimes funny songs make it into his repertoire. Constantly singing. Perhaps it's the peril of marrying the (casual) lead singer after having been married to the drummer for so long. Every song you hear that stands out winds up being played back to you, sometimes in the form of the strolling afternoon minstrel who has run out of things to do and is now following you around the house while you put away laundry, wielding his acoustic, and singing the theme from Snakes on a Plane.
I kid you not!
So kiss me goodbye
Honey, I'm gonna make it out alive
Some days are incredibly skewed from before. Our dynamics change and briefly we're given a taste of the partnership we cultivated as friends. Friends on equal footing.
He pointed out today feels alot like those times when we got comfortable enough to finish each other's sentences or to leave them be. To be comfortable together in spite of the albatross roosting between us. To be friends with all the expectations we heaped upon each other, swords drawn, dares stated and left to be fulfilled, if we had the guts.
Jacob sees his own doctor and has finally been given some medication to help relieve the pressure of being Jacob, married to Bridget. He is absolutely stunned by how much he managed to hold together and bottle up unwittingly over the past two years and the toll that has taken on him.
I'm dealing with all that fresh guilt, feeling responsible and he (and everyone) keeps trying to insist that it's not but really I'm not that dumb. In a way it's a huge relief because I've been worried. Jacob has crashed brutally just when things start smoothing out or when I feel strongest and then we both start over again. We're trying to prevent the crashes, the meltdowns, the lows or at the very least be decently equipped to deal with them when they occur.
I never want him to bottle his emotions and try and be strong for me when he doesn't feel strong. I don't want to wear him out or drag him down or put pressure on him anymore to fix things he has no control over. I want him to be happy. Happy in his own skin, happy with this life, happy with me and I want to be happy with him.
His own breakdowns served so many purposes. Reminders of our losses. Reminders of his humanity when I build him beyond his earthly capacity into someone who can fly. Reminders that it isn't just Bridget going through hard times and reminders that he can't hold things together forever and sometimes he fails. Sometimes he falls. Sometimes he doesn't want to be everything.
Sometimes he resents me.
One of the biggest, most shameful aspects of his feelings for me would be the resentment. How could I charm him into my life and then flaunt my other friendships, other relationships in front of him. How could I take his heart and then throw it away, repeatedly. How dare I not stick around and support him when he is angry or frustrated or overcome. How awful that I would close a chapter of my life he hasn't even read yet and refuse to have a baby with him, what he considered a knee-jerk reaction.
All of those are hypocritical. He approached me first with his emotions. He's thrown my heart away out of self-preservation needs. He has not supported me when I was overcome or frustrated. He closed the chapter first after losing the baby, he refused to comfort me, refused to talk about it.
He works so hard in some ways and closes off other avenues of communication with audible thuds. He's a walking contradiction.
What's good about it?
It's normal. Oh so normal. It can be changed, it can be encouraged and supported and turned into the right kinds of reactions. The right kind of openness. Without resentment. Without the need to bottle up. People like Jacob can only bottle up so long.
He has a great analogy? Metaphor? Story. Okay, no it's a sermon that details beginning a rocky, perilous journey on a road paved with broken glass and we're crawling on it with nothing to protect our flesh and as we learn to cope with the pain and the hardship we are granted shoes and soon the glass is sand and then it becomes quicksand but we conquer that too and then it's gravel and our shoes are worn so we get boots and pretty soon we'll be able to hail a cab. It's a very funny way he tells it. Not funny comical but funny touching. Every now and then in the story, he'll stop and take my hand or I'll distract him through a rough spot. It's hopeful.
Someday I'll get him to write it out.
He is human. A medicated broken human working to get better. To be better. To deal. So we can find the really good part of the road and stay on it. It's way easier for him to sing all these goofy songs on the smoother parts of the road.
