The wheels have been turning again lately. There are no more chemical cocktails coated in a little pink casing that I take every night before bed to keep the wheels idle. To keep them from running me over. But I don't feel like they're running me over anymore when they start turning. They don't scare me anymore. I've made progress and I've come out of a long, dark tunnel just a little different, a little better even. And I don't need the little pink pill to protect me from myself anymore. So when I say the things I have to say, they are coming from me. Real, authentic me.
I can feel again. Not everything beads up on my surface and rolls off anymore. And I want it this way. It was a nice break, not having to be so overwhelmingly affected by life. I needed that reprieve, and it allowed me to step back from it all, to breathe and to take a rest. It allowed me to re-center and to recharge, and now that I've come back from that break, I'm better equipped to handle life's challenges, and the feelings that arise with all of them. I am more mature, more seasoned, more aware, and more durable. I thought that voluntarily checking out with the help of a pill taken every day for the 5 months that I did, was a sign of weakness and inability to handle my own life, but it turns out it was a sign of strength. And for once I was able to wave away those preconceived notions and rise above them. And now I am here, feeling my feelings, thinking my thoughts, laughing and crying from an unobstructed core once again. It's taken me a little time to get sturdy footing here on land again, and sometimes I can still feel a little shaky, but I know that's okay, and I know it's the right way to face myself again. This time kinder and wiser.
I need you to hear me. I need you to really listen, and really hear me. I need you to see me. I need you to look up from all of the noise and distractions and entertainment, and I need you to really see me. I never feel those things. We talk to each other and we hear the words, and we look at each other and see the faces, but that's not really listening or seeing. I'm still learning how to communicate - in general, and also with you specifically. Everyone has a unique way in which they need to be heard and understood, and just as I feel you haven't figured out my needs here, I know I haven't figured out yours. I will continue to try. In this moment, all I can do is speak from my own place of need.
I need you to focus on just me sometimes. I feel that I am always sharing you with a computer screen. I don't feel that you ever look up and see me, and all that I do. I don't feel my efforts and work to keep our family chugging along are validated or even realized by you. And then sometimes I feel that maybe you don't want to look up and see how much I always have on my plate, because it's more convenient not to. And I don't know which one is more painful to me - to not be noticed, or to be disregarded. And I don't even know for sure what you really see or hear or feel, and what you don't. But what I feel is invisible and more than anything, underappreciated. I have balls in the air every day of my life now that we have a family, and I only ask for your help when I think that one of them is going to drop. What my heart aches for more than anything is for you to look up and see it sometimes before I have to ask. Just see me. See the full plate I'm always balancing and rearranging to make room for more. Acknowledge that I am working far longer than the 8 hours I sit behind a desk each day, and far harder before 8:30 in the morning and after 5:00 in the afternoon. I love building our family, but I need your help to do it. And part of that help is seeing me, hearing me, and by doing that, knowing me more deeply and fully, and being in tune with me enough to reach out and steady me before I have to tell you I'm stumbling. That's what I want more than anything in the world. That's what I fantasize about. That's what my heart braces itself for.
I appreciate you. I want you to know that. I appreciate and I love you. You genuinely want me to be happy, and I love that. You make sure all our bills our paid, that I have enough food in the freezer to make our dinners throughout the week, and enough beer in the fridge to soften the edges of the work day, and I appreciate that. You take care of the yard work and take out the garbage when we have tacos even if it's not full, and then you let Ada help you load the dishwasher. You fix things, and change light bulbs and you let me nap for as long as I want to on the weekends. And all of these things I love and appreciate much more than the words on this screen will ever communicate to you. I also love that you like good music and want to share concerts and bottles of wine with me, that our senses of humor have cozied up to each other in such a perfect, inseparable and nearly telepathic way, and that you still check to make sure sometimes that I'm not really mad at you when I'm giving you a hard time. These things make my life fuller, easier and more enjoyable, and nobody but you could offer them adequately.
I know that I can be better at letting you know I appreciate you and love you, and even see you and hear you. I don't always give as much as I think I deserve to be given. And I want to take more personal responsibility to make sure I more regularly show my gratitude for you as well. I just beg you to read these words and know that I'm reaching for you now. I need you, and I need things from you, and I hope that you will try for me. I'm not strong enough to always let the love I feel overshadow the negative things I feel, and I wish that I was. But I truly believe that to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you are making an effort for me, that you are seeing me and all that I do in my part of our family and marriage, will make it easier for me to learn how to overcome my own faults.
Don't forget about me. There is a me that is not just your wife, your friend, the mother of your children, and your co-habitant. All of those things contribute to who I am, but they don't encompass all of me, even as large and important a portion as they are. I'm still an individual, a woman, a work in progress, and I'm going to be evolving for the rest of my life. My needs will shift and grow and diminish, depending. I need you to keep seeing me through all of it, and I promise to keep seeing you, so that we don't realize one day that all we're holding onto are fossils of each other, and how we once existed together.
