Small Strokes Big Oaks

My workspace. Shared with the bed and Tim's green chair.

I am having one of those my-pants-don’t-fit-right, I-didn’t-even-want-to-stand-up-to-shower-this-morning-let-alone-deal-with-anything, I-don’t-want-to-talk-to-anyone days. You know the sort. I’m sure you’ve been there before.

As a teacher, these days are particularly challenging. At my job, I can’t avoid dealing with things or talking to people because, well, my job is to deal with things and talk to people. If I can plan for movies or group projects on those days, I do, but mostly I just have to suck it up and do my job. And it usually turns out OK.

As a wife, these days are even more difficult. Especially in the summer. Especially when Tim’s summer job is over and he is home. All. Day.

I love my husband. Deeply, madly, dearly, I love him. I love him even more when I don’t come home from the gym

Tim's workspace on the other side of the room.

to find the kitchen a mess because he set up his newest project and when he isn’t running the paper shredder at 10:30 in the morning. Zzzzzzzz-Zzzzzzzz-Zzzzzzzz. I don’t know if it’s the noise or the unexpected nature of the sound that gets to me more. You never quite know when the thing is going to turn on; it certainly isn’t the rhythmic type of noise you can tune out.

Sitting here, listening to the paper shredder drown out the awesomeness of the mix CD I’m listening to, I’m thinking there is absolutely no way we can possibly ever retire. Not because of money. No, we are well prepared in terms of retirement money (or, at least, we will be – we have accounts and all that). We can’t retire because I don’t know how I can possibly spend every minute of every day in the same house as him. As anyone, for that matter!

When you live in a two-bedroom apartment with the love of your life, and neither of you have any plans of leaving the apartment in any given day, it is literally impossible to avoid each other. Even if you can’t see each other, you can hear each other. Or you can hear the sports radio blasting from the other room, even when he’s doing something else like talking on the phone. And then you think you’re all smart and say, “If you’re not listening to that, can you turn it off? Do you even know what they’re saying?!” and he comes back and tells you exactly what they were just saying because he’s a dude, and dudes have an inexplicable way of multi-tasking ONLY when it comes to sports. Yea, that was stereotyping and a bit sexist. Whatever. It’s true and you know it.

People ask me what we need a house for if we don’t want kids. I say, we need a house so we can possibly be on separate floors during the day. So Tim can have his man cave in the basement for when his friends come over so I don’t have to retreat to the bedroom while they drink beers and play video games. So I can have an office that I don’t have to share with his desk and the guest bed and his god-awful ugly green “reading chair” that he does not ever use, to read or otherwise. I mean, we inherited each other’s stuff (and I had a lot of ugly stuff, too), but does that mean I have to look at that thing every day?

I’m just saying, it’s possible to love someone so much it hurts. And it can hurt good and hurt bad. No one ever tells you that when you first get married. They tell you he’ll always be there for you, but they don’t tell you he’ll always be there. And they don’t tell you how to deal with it, either, when all you need in the world is a few minutes alone to collect your thoughts.

We’re still getting our groove together, and just when we think we’ve gotten it, something changes and we have to re-groove. We’ve only lived together for a year, and I’m just now feeling comfortable enough to tell him honestly when I need to be left alone. And he’s just now understanding that this doesn’t mean I’m mad at him or upset at anything at all. It just means I need silence for an hour or so just to remind myself to breathe.

People say that the groove comes with time. They say you get into a rhythm together and everything eventually just works. I hope they’re right, but in a way, I hope they’re wrong, too. As annoying as it is to bump into him every time we are both in the kitchen, there is something exciting about the unexpectedness of it all, the randomness. I get bored with too much predictability, anyway. Like Tim says, “Let’s shake things up.”

Is it possible to get to a place that’s comfortable enough not to be irritatingly unpredictable, but unpredictable enough to not be irritatingly boring?

I hope so. I really hope so. And I think if anyone can do it, it’s us. Because, most of the time, when I bump into him in the kitchen, he hugs me. And mostly what I need more than to be alone is a good hug.

I’ll just have to remind myself of that the next time Tim decides he wants to shred all of the papers in the apartment.