LJ Idol - Week 20 - "Love Means Never Having to Say..."
My 31st birthday is this week. On Saturday. February 14th. Valentine’s Day every year, like it or not, for better or for worse.
As a child, having my birthday on Valentine’s Day was great. My mom was wonderful to remember both holidays, each year waking my brother and I with Valentine’s baskets in the morning and at night presenting my favorite treat, a chocolate chip cookie cake with extra icing. Candlelit for wishing, the comforting familiarity of that tradition was delicious.
Having Valentine’s Day on my birthday, now that was a different story. In my teenage years, as hormones ran rampant and the emphasis shifted from toys to romance, having a boyfriend for my birthday could make or break two holidays. Some years it was perfection, like when I turned 20, and my college boyfriend brought me a crazy bouquet he had handpicked, with a handwritten letter telling me why I reminded him of the inviting charm of purple heather, the exotic vibrancy of tiger lilies and the classic romance of a single, perfect red rose.
On the other hand, there were rotten times, like the year I turned 18. The Valentine’s night promised me by my 23-year-old boyfriend - an evening spent touring Atlanta in a limo, looking at skyscrapers through the skylight and drinking champagne - went up in smoke when he dumped me 72 hours before my birthday. Completely unsuspecting, he said while he’d been “content” to date me, he was never actually “happy” and I was simply not his “perfect” girl. It does make me feel mildly better that at 36 he’s still single…but that’s a different story altogether.
This year may be one of the bad ones. Um…My husband and I are no longer sharing a bed.
In January, I told him I wasn’t in love with him any longer. So, I rather feel like sleeping with him would be sending the wrong message.
It’s now been three weeks since my husband and I had The Talk. I have been sleeping between my children in their room, who have bunk beds but prefer to be in the double bed together. It is lovely, falling asleep after storytime in the warm, dozy half-light of the nursery. However, they both have a tendency to cling to me like burs in the night, so I wake up with my arm smashed against my face, up over my head, tingling with pins and needles from where I’ve been forced to remain in one position for six hours at a time.
Also, sharing a pillow with a two-year-old is not the ideal setup for optimum rest. My son rolled toward me the other night, and I smiled at his sweet face in the glow of the nightlight, thinking he was going to throw his arm over me for a cuddle. The foolishness of a mother’s sentimentality was rapidly brought to my attention. I didn’t even have time to close my eyes when he let fly with a giant, open-mouthed sneeze. Ugh.
After three weeks of bedding with the babies, Wednesday night I found my resolve weakening. I’d like to say it was sleep deprivation, combined with the sneeze-facial and my current cold that led me back to the husband in my bed, but in fact...I was intensely lonely.
You know, when I contemplated breaking up our marriage, I thought I would miss the sex the most.
About a week ago, my husband pinched my nipple in the hallway, a teasing invitation for lovin'. I smacked his hand away. He raised his eyebrows at me and said “Your loss.”
I raised mine back and replied “You’re absolutely right. It is my loss. We never had problems in the bedroom.” And that’s true - it was everywhere else that our relationship managed to fall apart.
So, I've discovered, the sex I can survive without.
What I miss most are the snuggles.
I am an affectionate person. I touch people all the time, give my children a thousand kisses a day, hug coworkers who are unhappy, think nothing of patting a frustrated student on the shoulder or letting the snotty, stinky pre-schoolers clamber all over me at storytime while sharing their book-treasures and tales of balloons lost and butterflies found.
Even when things were going downhill with my husband, there was still a physical closeness. A sense of safety in his solid presence here in the house, there in the bed. Even if he ignored me for six hours to game at his computer, I still took comfort knowing he was just a few feet away if I really needed him, that there was someone who cared about me right there, every night, who would hold me down when I felt like some internal hurricane was about to blow me away.
That anchor is gone. Right now he is so hurt, and angry, and with good reason, I suppose. He feels I shouldn’t dwell on the misdeeds of the past, I fear they are too great for me to ever move beyond. Emotions are never right or wrong, they just are - you feel what you feel - so we have to simply agree to disagree and in this case, the fate of our marriage is the price.
This has been a particularly rough week for me. Blame it on the full moon, the economy, the weather, whatever, it seems fate conspired to bring me low the week before my birthday. I have amazing friends and family propping me up, but they are all long-distance, and there is nothing like a good, hard hug to squeeze you back into a decent state of mind.
Wednesday night I was beside myself. My husband went to bed before me, as he often does now, and I stayed online searching for a friend, a cyber-hand to hold to keep me sane. That night, there was no one. I broke.
Logging off the Internet, I swiveled my chair toward the bedroom door.
Now, I may look like a whole person, but lately my heart feels like papier mache, all torn edges precariously pasted together with equal parts of hope and fear. From a distance I seem solid, but anyone close enough to count knows it’s a façade. Like a piñata, it wouldn’t take more than a few blows to crush me completely, but I carry on, pretending to be an impenetrable fortress, a smiling goddess, because if I pretend long enough, one day it won’t be an act anymore, right?
I needed to be held. Needed someone to make me feel that everything was going to be fine. Before I could really think about what I was doing, I walked to the bedroom door. He leaves it open now, an invitation? A recrimination? I paused for just a moment before stepping inside. Passing into the darkness was like entering a stranger’s room. I almost felt I should ask for permission, like my children do when they come to us for comfort in the dark.
“Can I…May I sleep in here tonight?”
I asked it only in my head. I slid onto the bed in silence, claimed a pillow and turned my back to him, not knowing what to expect. In a moment I got exactly what I came for. A strong arm snaked around my middle and pulled me close, a warm body curled around me from behind. Seven years of history, familiarity, the touch and smell of the father of my children…I exhaled with relief. I could feel the jagged edges melting together. I drifted off to sleep.
In the morning as we were languidly waking, legs tangled under the covers, heads close together on pillows, my husband said “See, wasn’t that nice, sleeping in here all night?” and I realized I’d been wrong to seek comfort in that bed.
We were fully clothed, there was no hanky panky, not even a kiss for old time’s sake, but there is such intimacy in falling asleep in someone’s arms - in waking up in someone’s arms - that it gave us both a false sense of security. I should not have been there.
“Yes…” I answered slowly, “But things are still not o.k. with us…”
He looked surprised. “Are you mad at me for something right now?” he asked me.
“Not mad today, but, this isn’t about today. It’s about the past six years.”
And bickering ensued.
It was my fault. I should have been strong, for both of us, and I was not.
Tonight I told my husband I was writing about us here, so he wouldn’t be shocked to come online and discover these words. I wanted to give him the chance to prepare himself before reading, or the opportunity to avoid it all together. I don’t want to hurt him, but how could I have written anything but this with a topic that cuts so close to the bone?
He was upset, and went to bed. I sat at my desk struggling with the urge to go comfort him, sit beside him and stroke his back, apologize again for things I cannot stop. What good would it have done, though?
I believe love means always being willing to say you are sorry - and I am - so sorry that things haven’t turned out the way we planned, that life didn’t treat us the way we expected, sorry that I can no longer make excuses for thing I’ve not been able to forgive or forget.
So tonight, when I go to sleep, it will be in the arms of my children. And tomorrow, I think I will clear the toys from the bottom bunk and claim it for my own.
Saturday, Valentine’s Day, my 31st birthday, I will wake under a Spongebob blanket, alone, but stronger, and braver perhaps for doing what is right and not just comfortable any longer.