I rarely do this...

I try to stay positive and promote positivity in others in everything I do. I see so much negativity around me, hear so much of it, that I just feel the need to combat it by throwing as much positive energy out there as I can. Some days that feels like a bigger burden than I’m able to deal with.

This past week has been rough. Ok, to be honest, I think the past year is just now catching up to me. Hell, maybe the past three years. But yesterday I finally got to my quiet point – it’s the point where you don’t open your mouth for fear of crying or cussing out your child or loved ones. Freud would talk about this in terms of a neurotic anxiety – worrying what the outcome of our possible behaviors could be even though it might be completely out of the ordinary for you.

Mike and I were sitting on the porch last night lamenting that Wilfred is in reruns now until next season. He asked if I thought I could write a show that was as funny as Wilfred and I wanted to respond, “Right, like in my sleep? Because that’s the only time I’d have to do that.” I shrugged and responded, “Probably not, I’m not that funny. But I was thinking about writing a new book.” Many of the people I know (many of whom are therapists) would ask a clarification question (“About what?”) but my husband isn’t like that; he just moves on to the next topic. When I realized he wasn’t going to ask me what I wanted to write about, I turned to go inside. “Babe,” he began pensively, “do you have any ‘me time?’ Like time when you do stuff for yourself?” “What’s that?” I asked, quasi-jokingly. He thought some more and asked, “Well what if I could give you an hour a day to relax? Do you think that would help? What would you do with that hour? You can’t Facebook or grade or write your dissertation, none of the have to stuff. What would you do?” And I seriously couldn’t answer him except to laugh and say, “Nap?”

But here’s the thing – my husband works and goes to school. He’s out of the house just as long as I am every day, and has homework on top of that. So his offer to me wasn’t even physically possible. But he does spend a lot of his time at home watching TV and playing video games while I spend my time cleaning and chasing a little boy. Doing laundry while he watches TV makes me so angry. But when I tell him why I’m angry he tells me that I’m requiring him to go by my expectations (the laundry or dishes need to be done on my schedule) and that’s not fair to him. My response would be, “If we went by your schedule the dishes would get done once per month,” but I refrain. Not talking back to your spouse takes a lot of mental energy, and is just one of the things that sucks my mental and physical energy during the day. If he just did a share of the day-to-day stuff then I wouldn’t need an hour – we’d both have time left over after the chores for the day are through.

So like I said, I rarely do this. I rarely complain about my stuff or what other people aren’t doing. But when my husband says, “We should start going to the gym,” I would love to respond, “We’d have time to do that if you and I worked as a team rather than me working as a manager and you acting like a non-fireable employee.”