GRRRRRR,……!

So we are a few days into the new year, with mixed results.  So much of the last year and a half, I have been so sad that I have pretty much felt like I was drowning most of the time.  I haven’t nearly as many moments of overwhelming sadness that I have had, but I really don’t know how much of that is because I am actually starting to feel better, or just that I am too busy and distracted with life as it is.  In most ways, I am pretty okay with being distracted because I am tired of feeling like hell all the time, even if it means I am just temporarily escaping it.  We have two of the guys in Corey’s platoon staying with us for a few months, and they are both really nice guys.  As I am writing this, one of them, Trevor, is playing his guitar and singing on the couch behind me.  He has an AMAZING voice and he can play the hell out of that thing.  If he doesn’t pursue it when he gets out of the Army, and thoroughly succeed, I will be surprised as all hell.  The other guy, Jason, is a computer genius and is beyond hysterical.  He has made it his goal to make me pee with laughter before he leaves and I am pretty sure it is going to happen at some point!  So, all in all, after the misery of the last several months,… hell, YEARS, I am glad for the distraction, temporary or not.

But I will admit, I am having harder time adjusting to life with Corey again than I thought I would.  Before he got home, he verbalized perfectly for me when I couldn’t come up with it on my own.  I had told him I was almost afraid for him to come home, and I didn’t really get why.  But he got it instantly;  I was afraid to have him come home because I was afraid of the almost inevitable conflict that would come with him.  The light bulb went off for me, and I realized, sadly, that he was absolutely right.  I guess I am just too worn out and too pushed to the edge to deal with much more.  I spent a lot of conversations before he came home, trying to tell him where my head and heart are now, and I don’t think he listened as well as he should have.  He tends to wear rose-colored glasses about things like that, instead of really hearing what I am trying to tell him and that just doesn’t help when he gets home and is faced with the reality.

So here I am, the lone female in a house of men, and it feels like things are right back where they always have been.  It’s like I don’t exist for him as anything more than his personal domestic diva.  There is so little appreciation and consideration that I feel thoroughly and completely worthless.  He doesn’t get that the promises and the pretty words don’t mean jack unless they are followed by change and action.  I feel like I exist simply to serve his purposes.  Ever since he got home, it has been like that, starting even on the very first day he was home.  In a lot of ways, it is even worse than it was before he ever left, partly because I laid it ALL out there for him in the most blunt way possible and nothing has changed.  It has been one thing after another and I am exhausted.  I don’t want to fight with him right after he gets home, but there is  a limit to how much I can take before I lose my mind.  It is like he doesn’t get that I have feelings and worth, too.

This morning was a perfect example.  Yesterday, I specifically asked him if he had everything he needed ready for work today, to which he replied that he did.  But the man is notorious for not doing a damn thing until the last minute.  There is an oft-used Army phrase used in this situation,…  “lack of planning on YOUR part, does NOT consititute an emergency on MY part”!  But it never seems to work for me.  Sure enough, 0545 comes and he is making lunch for himself and Jason and he can’t find his insulated lunch box.  I haven’t seen or thought of the damn thing in a year and he waits until 15 minutes before he has to leave to look for it?!  I come up with an alternative and he laughs at me.  Annoying but liveable.  Then I inquired as to whether or not he considered the fact that we had had 14″ of snow since he had last driven his car, something I had mentioned yesterday,… you know, when he actually had the time to do it.  But, no.  So there I am, at 0545 in the middle of trying to get 4 boys up and getting ready for school, outside and starting his car, clearing it, and shoveling out his car.  It was completely snowed in and I shoveled the hell out of it, even getting it out for them so all they to do was get in and go.  Did he thank me?  Nope.  Not a word.  Not even when I joked about his failure to.  But Jason did.  Hmmmm,… what is wrong with this picture?