Marriage Is Tough.

One of the girls at work is going though a divorce.  Not particularity messy, but unexpected.  For her of course, the rest of us saw the big, giant, neon glow of reg flags from here to Pluto, but everyone's relationship is different, and while they may have been the kiss of doom for most, it was normal for her.  Regardless, after 30 years, she's struggling.  She worries about things she can not control, being financially stable, and keeping it together.

Divorce is hard. It's similar to the grieving process that someone would go through during death, except the ghost of that person wanders the Earth, randomly stopping by to haunt you forever.  It's not until you are through the process that you can really move forward, and you don't get to decide how fast or slow the other person goes through their stages of grief.  Add kids, financial dependency, or any other wild card, and it can feel like you are forever tied to the other person, being pulled in every direction like a marionette on strings.

I remember the feeling well. Our stories are so very different, and yet, are exactly the same.  Her story has just started and mine somehow, just all worked out.  I didn't need a safety net, a plan, or a knight in shining armor.  I just needed to focus on getting through that moment, that week, that night.  And while I had a lot of support, there was no free ride. There is nothing special about me or what I've accomplished, I just kept going down the path no matter how many times I was dragged off it.

Still, the entire conversation was draining.  It brought back so many thoughts of how easy it is to have it all fall apart.  Life gets busy, it's easy to forget to be present in your marriage.  It's hard to find to find the balance between marriage and just being friends. It's hard to not grow apart alongside thoughts of what's for dinner? and is it trash day?  

Which of course, is my biggest fear.  I think the downside to having traveled this road is that I know how easy it is to fall off the path. I look in the mirror and see the age lines. I know I've let myself slide a bit. My gray hair has taken over in a less than subtle way, wiry and crinkled, always sprouting in the opposite direction of where it should.  My girlish figure no longer carelessly bounces, but now sends shock waves undulating though the universe.  My patience is thinner than the worn out T-shirt I prefer to wear to bed.  And there's nothing sexy about my blue fuzzy bathrobe and bacon and egg motif slippers, but they are so, so comfortable.

Yet still, he loves me.

For some un-Godly reason, he still does.  I know he sees the same woman I do in the mirror, and yet he still kisses my neck while I'm elbow deep in Dawn dish soap and last night's dinner.  He'll tell me to leave it all and head to bed when my nagging borderlines on psychopathic babbling.  He understands when I wake him up in the middle of the night to ask him what time it is, because the frustration of finding my glasses without my glasses is just too much at 2 am. He plucks my ever elusive blonde chin whiskers, and could care less if I've shaved my legs when he sneaks a peak of what I'm wearing under that blue bathrobe.  And still, every day he blindly tells me there's no other woman he want to be with.

Part of me wonders what red flags others would see if they looked in at the intricacies of my marriage.  What part of my relationship is only normal for me?  I have wondered if someday he will finally be done with my irrational need to clear clutter off the kitchen counter and my sporting of pea green facials. But like everyone in a marriage, I hope that he won't. I cling to the faith that he'll find my laugh lines as endearing now as the days we shared that formed them.  That my worry lines will remind him of the strength we have pulled from each other, and my extra squish around the middle will make for better, more satisfying snuggling and the feeling that we will always be safe in each other's arms.

Or, that his eyesight will fail and he'll only remember the optimistic, bouncy, smooth skinned, 20-something woman from the mirror that he fell in love with all those years ago.