(no subject)
whatever you don't, don't do everything for him. make him cook dinner, do the dishes, take out the trash.
these were my mother's words of wisdom upon hearing that i was moving in with him, that i was essentially let him have the milk for free, as the old saying goes, that i was rushing my way into a reality that she herself knew from the age of eighteen.
i laughed and embeded the words in the folds of my memory, but that doesn't mean i listened.
i see socks on the floor and i pick them up. i cringe at the thought of an unmade bed. i hate the way the residue from dinner hardens on the plates if it's not rinsed within ten minutes. if the laundry isn't done early enough of sunday my stomach twists into a nasty knot of anxiety.
and him? he's lazy. he lavishes in the very minutes that make me insane. he could walk past a pair of socks sixteen hundred times and forget that laundry needs to be done until he pulls his final pair of boxers out of the drawer. he already expects dinner five night a week and makes a big fuss if i ask him to take out the trash for a change. and it's my fault, one hundred and ten percent.
i make sure the dinner's ready because i know he'll be hungry. i pick up the socks because i know they'll sit there otherwise. i do the laundry because if i get it in the washer and switch it to the dryer, i can ask him to go down and pick the hot laundry up without feeling like i'm nagging too much. then i'll sort it and fold seventy-five percent of it and hate the way the piles will sit on his side of the bed until he wants to go to sleep, when he'll promptly relocate them to the nearest chair. because what other choice do i have? i could put them in the drawers for him, but wouldn't that just be the final step to complete and total self-defeat?
i don't even consider these things character flaws. sure, it would be nice to not have to do it all. but i vacillitate between narrowing my eyes and breaking into a wide smile when i see him reclining on the couch after i finish scrubbing every inch of the floor. i try to adopt his "who cares" approach to housework and it works, for an hour or two, until the socks and the unsorted laundry and the dirty dishes might as well be screaming my name. to strike only fills me with anxiety, and what's worse - it taps into my secret fear that if i don't do it all, i'm not everything. and what would be stopping him from looking for someone who is?
from perfect daughter to perfect wife. how is it possible that i know he has never noticed when i've windexed the bathroom yet i still see the presence of streaks on the mirror as evidence of all that i fail to be?
these were my mother's words of wisdom upon hearing that i was moving in with him, that i was essentially let him have the milk for free, as the old saying goes, that i was rushing my way into a reality that she herself knew from the age of eighteen.
i laughed and embeded the words in the folds of my memory, but that doesn't mean i listened.
i see socks on the floor and i pick them up. i cringe at the thought of an unmade bed. i hate the way the residue from dinner hardens on the plates if it's not rinsed within ten minutes. if the laundry isn't done early enough of sunday my stomach twists into a nasty knot of anxiety.
and him? he's lazy. he lavishes in the very minutes that make me insane. he could walk past a pair of socks sixteen hundred times and forget that laundry needs to be done until he pulls his final pair of boxers out of the drawer. he already expects dinner five night a week and makes a big fuss if i ask him to take out the trash for a change. and it's my fault, one hundred and ten percent.
i make sure the dinner's ready because i know he'll be hungry. i pick up the socks because i know they'll sit there otherwise. i do the laundry because if i get it in the washer and switch it to the dryer, i can ask him to go down and pick the hot laundry up without feeling like i'm nagging too much. then i'll sort it and fold seventy-five percent of it and hate the way the piles will sit on his side of the bed until he wants to go to sleep, when he'll promptly relocate them to the nearest chair. because what other choice do i have? i could put them in the drawers for him, but wouldn't that just be the final step to complete and total self-defeat?
i don't even consider these things character flaws. sure, it would be nice to not have to do it all. but i vacillitate between narrowing my eyes and breaking into a wide smile when i see him reclining on the couch after i finish scrubbing every inch of the floor. i try to adopt his "who cares" approach to housework and it works, for an hour or two, until the socks and the unsorted laundry and the dirty dishes might as well be screaming my name. to strike only fills me with anxiety, and what's worse - it taps into my secret fear that if i don't do it all, i'm not everything. and what would be stopping him from looking for someone who is?
from perfect daughter to perfect wife. how is it possible that i know he has never noticed when i've windexed the bathroom yet i still see the presence of streaks on the mirror as evidence of all that i fail to be?