(I know I need to get off this alliterative T thing.)
My emotions of late look like the lie-detector printout of a guilty person on a bad TV cop show: highlowhighlowhighlowhighlowhighlow. Last night another bitter fight with Daniel. I sobbed the whole time and he so clearly wanted to be anywhere but next to me. I was fine when I got home this evening — without my favorite mood-elevator-in-a-glass (two glasses actually, or rather one glass twice). But then another tailspin and now I’m vexed.
This week is the first significant test of not trying. I want to try, surreptitiously, sneaking up on a miracle. Daniel sussed me out last night, hence the bitter fight and tears. Daniel doesn’t want a miracle. He wants it all to stop. Now. Cold turkey. He is upset, deeply, by my attempts at the nicotine patch equivalent of trying-while-not-trying. He doesn’t know that I foreswore the clomid refill this cycle. He does know that I haven’t touched the ovulation test strips, but he’s entirely unimpressed by it. It’s just another way that we are so far apart on this issue, even now.
His behavior should be a screaming siren, a flashing red light, a horror movie audience shouting “Don’t go in there!” It should tell me that not getting pregnant was probably necessary for the smooth running (eventually — I hope) of our marriage, and that I have averted wrecking something pre-existing and important for us and for Milo. He made soothing noises two weeks ago when it came to an end, but he didn’t mean them. What he really means is fear and panic and rejection of what I’d hoped for. He can’t help it. He’s not young, he feels radically overworked, and flayed by life’s incessant demands. It sounds like run of the mill life to me, but Daniel feels it’s an attack. He avoided this harried normal state for a long time, and now it mocks and insults him.
It makes me very sad and angry (again) to type this, but I need to. I need to stop avoiding it or pretending it’s not real. It’s the most real thing. I do wish, though, that the most real thing for him was understanding just how hard I’m trying (or not trying, or trying not to try), and how I’m handling this rather well, I think. But neither one of us can quite see past our own feelings. And no amount of words or tears will help him see how I feel and what I need, which, right now, is to keep trying in this futile way just to take the edge off the big sadness till I’m strong enough to absorb it.
Another Door 