The last six months that Mike hasn't been going to the hospital for wound care have been, I think, the hardest of the entire 20 months since nec/fac descended upon us on August 1, 2012. Not having someplace to go twice a week has meant there's nothing to distract him, nothing to take the place of nothing but time to sit and think. Think about how he got here. Think about his first marriage and the magnificent trainwreck it was. Think about his perceived failures in life, his regrets. Think about how he views himself. Think about his failures as a husband and a father. Thinking about.......thinking. He's had a lot of time to think.
With that all that time to think has come the inevitable butt kicking of oneself that usually goes with self-reflection. Coulda woulda shoulda. The quickest way to spiral down into self-hatred is to employ those three phrases.
My husband had a childhood best left to movies on Lifetime. It was a horrendous childhood. He was born to a 16 year old mother that didn't want him but was made to keep him by her mother. Every chance she got to inflict some form of hatred on her son, she did. She made sure he knew just how little he was wanted and how much she hated him. It didn't matter WHAT she hated him for, only that she HATED him. For her, that was enough. From the time he was five or six, he learned to just paste a smile on his face and swallow whatever was bothering him, whatever he was thinking about. It didn't matter if he was aching inside or angry or fearful. He just swallowed it. He learned to function on a level that most humans can't understand. Inside, he was chaos. Outside, he was cucumber cool. Inside, he was molten lava. Outside, he was mellow.
The past several months he's begun having serious problems with acid in his stomach. All the down time he's had since his twice a week trips to Salem Hospital were finished has given him nothing but time to think. And the bubbling vat of acid that is his stomach started to cause serious problems with his health. Tonight, that all came to a head, and in the process, I learned something very, very important.
I learned to communicate with my husband.
We sat down at the kitchen table, and I was wanting to know why? Why all of a sudden did he seem to have problems with stomach acid? He shared with me the coping mechanisms he learned as a child, putting on the smiling face, all the while he was a bubbling pot of pain and chaos on the inside.
"We fight all the time. It kills me to fight with you."
We fight all the time? Fight? I wasn't aware we fought all the time. We certainly have our tense discussions and from time to time, I can be quite the sarcastic, snide witch and he can be a real peach of a jerk, but that was just being, well, us. Fortunately, those alter egos don't appear very often but we are human and we have been under enormous amounts of stress and we aren't perfect. I won't mince words--we can be real assholes when we want to.
"The other day when the subject of my car came up, you yelled at me and said you hated the car and wanted nothing to do with it. You don't know how badly stuff like that affects me."
"You're just being overly sensitive about that!" I replied. "You've always been that way when it comes to your car. That's why I call it 'The Other Woman'."
"You HEAR me, but you don't LISTEN. When you say things like you hate my car and don't want anything to do with it, I hear my mother. I hear my mother saying, 'No, I don't want to go to your stupid basketball game, you worthless piece of shit! I don't give a rat's ass about you and your stupid game!' When you put down my car you're putting ME down just like she did. You don't know how much those words hurt me inside and then I start internalizing everything and my stomach going and......do you see now?"
Yes. Most ashamedly, I see now.
I was crushed that my poorly chosen words had caused such pain to the man I love so much. NOW I see how much my opinion means. He has such talent in his hands and his heart for things like muscle cars, and in a few words, I was crushing that spirit of craftsmanship that he was so proud of. I'd crushed his dreams of having a beautiful car that he created with his own hands. I'd crushed the heart of the little boy that sought approval and love from his mother, only to hear disdain, scorn, ridicule, criticism, hatred, and eventually, pain inflicted with whatever she could lay her hands on.
I do not begin to understand a man and his car. It's expensive, time-consuming.........expensive--you see the pattern emerging? I don't get it. I'm not made to get it. He looks at it and sees a masterpiece. I look at it and see dollar bills. But it's important to him and he doesn't want to hear criticism or scorn about something that means that much to him anymore than I want criticism or scorn about some calligraphy project I'm working on, or a crochet project, or something I've slaved all afternoon over for dinner.
Tonight, coming up on 12 years since I married him, I learned all over again how to communicate with my husband. Once I learned the difference between the words coming out of my mouth and the words that entered his ears, and how those words affected him, in the midst of tears as he's telling me, as he's opening up his heart once again so that I can peer inside the soul of a little boy all those years ago hearing hatred coming from the woman that was supposed to love him, I found myself loving him even more, if that were possible. Even after all this time, even at the age of almost 49, I'm still learning. I'm learning to hold in my hands so tenderly, the heart of a 50 year old man that needs gentle words from the woman he loves. He may be a giant of a man, but he's still got the heart of that little boy and this time, I won't be throwing words of venom at him. I need to stop and think about what I'm saying before the words leave my mouth. A lesson many, MANY women need, and should, learn.
Proverbs 18:20-22: 20 With the fruit of a man's mouth his stomach will be satisfied; He will be satisfied with the product of his lips. 21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit. 22 He who finds a wife finds a good thing And obtains favor from the LORD.…
