Wednesday, February 3, 2016

All roads lead to...

I had bronchitis.  Well, I guess by rights, I still do.  Andy had encouraged me to see the doctor, which I did.  She gave me some weird antibiotic- doxy roxy moxy something.  I don't know.  All I know is that I was allergic to it and I spent the next 24 hours trying to get it out of my system.

Large puffy spots all over my face and chest and shoulders... oh yeah.  It was exciting.  I thought I was going to go into shock and die, of course.  Because all roads lead to death in my book.  I'm ridiculous.  I know.

Meanwhile Andy was also sick, and poor Liam was feverish all weekend.  I gave him some ibuprofen here and there just to keep it under wraps.  After all, three sick people in the house does not a happy family make.  I don't think Andy and I had a civil word all weekend.  When he's sick he gets mean, and when I'm sick I get vulnerable, and it makes for TERRIBLE bedfellows.  Like, terrible.

So I find out, unrelated to the bronchitis, I need my gallbladder out.  It's sludgy.  It's not working.  It's hurting me.  Therefore the logical thing to do would be to remove it.  It's an outpatient surgery, from what I understand.  But of course, I'm going to suffer complications and die, because as we discussed- all roads lead to death.  This surgery makes me edgy.  I don't like the thought of a knife slicing into my skin.  I don't like the thought of anything piercing the skin, actually. (I was 18 when I got my ears pierced.  I actually signed the consent form for myself.)

Andy, God love him, does not do well when I'm sick or when Liam is sick...or when he is sick.  He panics.  He freaks out.  He passes upset, concerned, compassion, and just runs directly at "angry and mean."  (Sorry honey.  But you do.)  NORMALLY, I can thwart this, because I know it's coming and I know he loves us.  I know his heart, so I try to understand it the best I can.  But I was terrified to tell him I needed surgery.  He was out with a friend the night before so, I just told him first thing in the morning before he went to work.

"Bye honey!  Oh, PS- they're gonna take an organ from my body!  Love you!!!"  He went to anger pretty much directly.  Not at me.  But at the ER doctor who noted my "sludge" but did not act upon it.  And then proceeded to "we'll get through it, we always do."

It occurred to me at that very moment that marriage is very very hard.  It is.  No two marriages are alike.  No two people are alike.  This isn't bad, mind you, it's just an immutable law of nature.  Any time you take two people and make them interact for the rest of their lives, you're going to have conflict.



My sister is getting married.  She's 21.  She says she's ready, and maybe she is.  She's been planning this wedding for...legit 4 years.  They were engaged in January, but the venues had even been booked before that.  It's ridiculous, but it's not my life.  So I should maybe delete my prior comment and say she IS ready- for the big party that is a wedding.  She's ready to look like a princess.  She's ready to have her picture taken and give hugs and kisses and eat cake.  THAT.  She is ready for.  She's ready for the Hollywood.

The truth is that marriage- as we previously noted- is very very hard.  And after that Hollywood is over, well.  Hee hee.  It's hard.  When you get married, and you're staring dreamily at each other, you make a laundry list of all the things that could go wrong in your lives:

Sickness and in health?  That's the common cold, right?  Or surely it'll be HIM getting sick, or our future BEAUTIFUL, blameless, spotless children.  I'll be just caring for them, wearing pearls and a matching jumpsuit...  Bam.  Four years into it.  MS.  In sickness and in health now looks like you laying back down in an MRI machine and clenching your husband's hand for dear life as they speak your possible future.  It looks like chronic fatigue where you're once again, back down on the summer lawn because you've passed out from the heat.  It looks like screaming into your pillow because you're fairly sure your life is over, so how could you share that life with anyone else?

Richer or poorer?  Well everyone is poor when they get married, right?  He's got a good job which I know he's going to advance at.  He's of course smart and intelligent.  And my job is iron clad!  We drive two well running cars and going for groceries is such fun!  Oh groceries.  How I love to shop for you and pull everything off the shelves I could ever imagine.  Stuff mom would never let me get... sigh.  Nope.  Job loss.  Bankruptcy.  It costs money to be sick- go to the doctor- get medicine.  You realize you're sick of cooking after 3 weeks.  There's no money to go out to eat- and when there IS money, you can never agree on what to eat anyway!  (Can I get an Amen?)

I think we ALL go into marriage with rose colored glasses on.  Because we like living there.  It's easy there.  We can shove more things under the rug and pretend they're normal.  We can just ignore those hurtful things we said to each other because we're IN LOVE and I know we didn't mean them! *eye flutter harp strum*  Some people, I think, just go into marriage with more of that veil over their eyes.

My husband is a wonderful man.  We argue, but we make up.  It's the natural flow of a relationship.  And since I've vowed to him that I will love him until the day we die, and we all know all roads lead to...well.  You know.  I intend to keep that promise.  I'm too stubborn to let him forget he promised to take care of me forever :)