Anger

 I'm mad. So what else is new? This is the longest Christina and I have gone without speaking after an argument. It's been 2 days and tonight will be the 3rd night. The truth is that I don't want to talk. I spent yesterday and today either doing things with Ari and Mason that needed to be done or things around home or town, but you know what I haven't been? Anxious.

I've known that I've been supremely anxious, but I have had a difficult time describing its severity or explaining why it existed at all. Shockingly, now that I've spent 48 hours without giving a fuck what Christina thinks, says, or does, I get it! I had no idea: my anxiety has been related to her perception and judgment of me. Maybe not all of it, but 99% of it! That is shocking news to me. I'm embarrassed that I'm so unable to see myself that I didn't even know this was causing it.

It's been the most peaceful 2 days. I made decisions, and these have been the thoughts that have gone through my mind:

- "She's probably checking my location, and angry that I'm here (mall or restaurant or Target).

- She's probably angry that I've been gone so long with the kids. 

- She's probably angry that I haven't communicated about when we'll be back (because I don't know myself).

- She's probably angry that I haven't been home and done the dishes.

- She's probably checking my USAA account to see where I've spent money.

- She's probably running a diatribe in her head about what cash I'm using and how I'm using it.

- She's probably mad that I turned Ari's screen time off and allowed him to play his iPad overtime while he ran errands with me and Mason.

- She's probably mad I slept in.

- She's probably mad I went to Barnes and Noble after dropping the kids off. She's probably watching my location and judging me. She doesn't know I'm sitting here working. She probably thinks I'm doing something fucking absurd like cheating or doing drugs or something equally ridiculous.

- We have video cameras in our house, she has my Apple map location at all times, she can see my location, speed, direction of travel and even what I'm LISTENING TO in real time on the Tesla app. My messages and probably calls sync with my iPad. She can see anything, anytime. I have nothing to hide. But I bet she thinks I'm doing something sneaky. How fucking crazy is that?

- She's probably mad that I decided to leave again.

- She's probably looking at my location again.

- She probably has something to say about the fact that I'm at a wings/pizza sports bar, and about the time of night it is (8 pm).

- She probably won't believe me when I tell her I was taking the 2nd Remotasks retraining course this weekend, and taking notes.

I don't believe she ever thinks I do anything right. I don't make the right decisions about myself, my body, my health, my money, my car, my kids, my time. I don't make the right decisions about anything. Everything that I do at home is done with the CONSTANT anticipation of what her belief about me will be as I'm doing it. I honestly didn't even realize it! I do the laundry and dishes and clean up because I'm anxious about her coming home and being upset that I didn't do enough. 

When she asks what I did today, I panic and try to remember everything because she probably thinks I'm lazy and don't do a fucking thing, ever, but I've been running around all day, non-stop. My mind goes blank. I panic even more. I feel like I should keep a separate running list of what I do every day, for approval and sign off.

So for 2 days, I haven't had ANY of that in my head and it has been SO FUCKING PEACEFUL. But I don't know where to go from here. Whenever we do have a conversation, I don't anticipate receiving things that I feel I deserve: an apology, for one. An acknowledgment of the fact that what happened Friday night with her being pissed because I went to Cook Out to get a milk shake at 11 pm was uncalled for. The fact that it's culminated in 2 days of the silent treatment, although I'm not sad about that because I needed this space.

I first noticed the difference when I was with Mason and Ari all Saturday afternoon running errands. I hadn't connected like that with them in so long. I can't remember how long it's been. And we didn't even do anything that would've been seen by an outsider as connecting. It was simply going to eat, going to Target and the mall, shopping for Mason's dance outfit, looking at things in the mall without me being anxious or angry. Ari conquering some of his fear regarding escalators - asking me if we could go to the mall on his next birthday and just go up and down the escalator the whole day. Me hearing it and allowing it to saturate my brain even a tiny bit before shooting an answer off in his direction. Feeling like whenever we got home, it would be FINE. It didn't matter. Because I am a 41 year old woman and mother and I can make my own goddamn decisions about little things in my life and my kids' lives.

Noticing that feeling so profoundly startled me. I don't know how long I haven't had it. When did it get replaced with anxiety? That I can't do enough, be enough, say enough,  not say enough, make right decisions? When did Christina's opinion about me suddenly matter more than my own? Why didn't I notice it then? How long have my kids and I been suffering unnecessarily because of it?

Just how much push back am I going to receive when I impart this newfound knowledge to her? She's going to respond "oh, so now I can't ever say anything to you because you think I'm judging you." She's said that before. Shit, she basically said it Friday night when I told her that the delivery of her words meant something entirely different than what she supposedly intended. *For the record: I believe 1,000% that the intention was identical to the takeaway I had: she was pissed that I went to Cook Out, probably didn't believe that's where I had been, she was pissed I'd taken so long, she had preconceived ideas about why I was parked and not driving, she might have fucking thought I was meeting a person or doing something involving drugs (though I have no idea what), and she wanted to drive home the point that she was fucking annoyed and pissed and possibly suspicious. The phone call went like this:

*Rings*

Me: yes ma'am?

Her: What are you doing?

Me: Eating a milkshake.

Her: ***************silence********************** You're parked in an area where homeless people and drug dealers hang out.

Me: I'mmmmm where I got the milkshake (?)

Her: Cook Out is open at this time of night??

Me: It's open until 4 am.

Her: *****************more silence*******************

Me: I'm coming home.

Click.

Followed by the stupid conversation at home during which I asked what her issue really was, and she professed to be concerned about me being in an unsafe area. When I conveyed that nothing about her tone or words conveyed care or concern, she said "No matter what my intention is, you don't receive it that way, so what's the point? I don't know what to tell you Camille."

Now here we are.

I feel empowered. I can't remember how long it's been since I've felt or said that. I do. I feel like I've been looking at this swirling mass of shit rotating around me and it's been spinning so fast that I couldn't identify anything in it, and all of a sudden, everything stopped. It all fell to the ground and I had time to examine it.

But I also feel like my wife is a human who is going to tell me I'm wrong, or at the very least, if I'm not wrong that she has no part to play in any of this. She sent me a text today to notify me that I was in Shit Handler. You fucking THINK?! I'm pissed. I'm really fucking pissed, which is exactly why I haven't uttered a single word from my mouth about this. I don't want what comes out of it to be spiteful or anything less than the truth.

Anger exists out of necessity. It arrives when a perceived injustice has occurred. I've been SO angry, for more than a year and I haven't known why. That is a long motherfucking time to feel an emotion and not be able to fully understand it or express it. It is because I feel like I am married to a human who does not believe I make good decisions, or that I am capable of successfully moving through life without her guidance.

She'll tell anybody: She has a superpower. She can see EVERYTHING! All the things other people can't see! And she knows exactly what needs to be done. So then she puts it upon herself to swoop in and save the person who didn't ask to be saved from the thing no one else saw but her.

I don't need to be saved.

I don't need to be told how to function.

I don't need to be told how to parent.

I don't need to be undermined.

I don't need to be made to believe that I cannot trust myself. I have lived that my entire life.

I need someone who loves and supports ME. Not the version of me that they think is the better version, because they've fixed my flaws or at least pointed them out.

I need someone who treats me like an equal. Who says, "whatever you think honey. I trust you. You make good decisions."

I need to sit in this. I may need to map this with Charlie. This is a big deal, and it's caused a long path of destruction and unhappiness. I need to figure out what working through this looks like.