An hour ago, I dropped John off at Detroit Metro to fly to PA to begin a new job. I am in tears.
"What?" you might ask. "I thought you were sick of having him around 24/7," you might say to me.
I was, but over the past 15 months of unemployment and being together every waking moment (and every sleeping one), we've found our groove. We've found our rhythm. And I'm not looking forward to going back to being alone.
Last week, I watched the Golden Globes award show and saw Adam Driver's and Scarlett Johansson's nominations for a movie called "Marriage Story". Because they are such powerhouse actors, and because they rarely film anything that isn't "R", I was hoping I could watch them in it. Thankfully, the movie was on Netflix, and even more thankfully, I could edit it through VidAngel and watch it (because it is, in fact, rated R).
The first ten minutes of the movie are magical. They each spend five minutes narrating what they love about each other while showing the other person doing exactly what they are describing. I seriously fell in love with both of them in those ten minutes.
But then we as an audience come to find out that they've been given an assignment by a therapist to think of the things they love about each other in order to make the divorce less painful and less mean.
I hate to say it, but Adam Driver's character didn't want divorce, but Scarlett Johansson's did because she could only find the faults in and see oppression from her husband, all things that I have shamefully done.
For me, the most difficult part of the last 15 months has been living every hellish moment along with John and being able to do absolutely nothing about anything. In the beginning, John would sit next to me in the car, in a restaurant, on the couch, talking on the phone to one of the many people who knew about his ordeal. While I was incredibly thankful for the army of friends who have been by his side this entire time, it was stressful for me to hear the minute details of the case described over and over and over, and to hear the pain and misery and self-doubt that John was experiencing...over and over and over. He quickly learned that he needed to step outside if he was going to recount yet again the latest development in his case. And he also needed to step outside the house or car or restaurant if his lawyer called. I just couldn't handle hearing his lawyer tell him that he basically had no chance of winning, and knowing that we would need to sell another car or the tractor to pay the lawyer fees so that we could NOT win.
But since the hearings have ended, John and I have had more time to just figure out how to be together all of the time without the additional stress of our life falling apart. It's the little things.
As much as neither of us likes our current living situation (the toilet seats are too round and short for him, and I miss all of my beautiful things), we have made it work.
And that's what I wanted to tell the couple in "Marriage Story". You can do this. You can make it work. You just have to back off your pride and root for yourselves!
As I drove John to the airport this morning, I was telling him how much I love him, and I told him that I now know that I would never divorce him. Funny, right? It's true--if we have successfully survived the past 15 months, we can survive anything.
And then I drove myself home, walked in the apartment alone (bringing in his suit that he didn't want to get furred up in the back seat of Greenie), climbed the stupid stairs that we hate so much and saw this:
"What?" you might ask. "I thought you were sick of having him around 24/7," you might say to me.
I was, but over the past 15 months of unemployment and being together every waking moment (and every sleeping one), we've found our groove. We've found our rhythm. And I'm not looking forward to going back to being alone.
Last week, I watched the Golden Globes award show and saw Adam Driver's and Scarlett Johansson's nominations for a movie called "Marriage Story". Because they are such powerhouse actors, and because they rarely film anything that isn't "R", I was hoping I could watch them in it. Thankfully, the movie was on Netflix, and even more thankfully, I could edit it through VidAngel and watch it (because it is, in fact, rated R).
The first ten minutes of the movie are magical. They each spend five minutes narrating what they love about each other while showing the other person doing exactly what they are describing. I seriously fell in love with both of them in those ten minutes.
But then we as an audience come to find out that they've been given an assignment by a therapist to think of the things they love about each other in order to make the divorce less painful and less mean.
I hate to say it, but Adam Driver's character didn't want divorce, but Scarlett Johansson's did because she could only find the faults in and see oppression from her husband, all things that I have shamefully done.
For me, the most difficult part of the last 15 months has been living every hellish moment along with John and being able to do absolutely nothing about anything. In the beginning, John would sit next to me in the car, in a restaurant, on the couch, talking on the phone to one of the many people who knew about his ordeal. While I was incredibly thankful for the army of friends who have been by his side this entire time, it was stressful for me to hear the minute details of the case described over and over and over, and to hear the pain and misery and self-doubt that John was experiencing...over and over and over. He quickly learned that he needed to step outside if he was going to recount yet again the latest development in his case. And he also needed to step outside the house or car or restaurant if his lawyer called. I just couldn't handle hearing his lawyer tell him that he basically had no chance of winning, and knowing that we would need to sell another car or the tractor to pay the lawyer fees so that we could NOT win.
But since the hearings have ended, John and I have had more time to just figure out how to be together all of the time without the additional stress of our life falling apart. It's the little things.
- We roll out of bed each morning together, and without even taking two steps, we turn around and make the bed together. And then he goes to scoop the cat box and sweep the laundry room floor of cat litter, and I feed Jake, and feed and water the dogs. Then, while I'm cleaning up the kitchen from whatever snacks we were eating until 2 a.m., he takes the dogs out.
- If I pour too much milk in my cereal, I'll hand him the bowl and he fills it up with cereal for himself.
- He fills up my gas tank for me because he knows I hate to do it (and I know he knows that I won't hunt for the cheapest gas, so he does that too).
- He takes Cherry running which he knows makes me happy because she's much nicer afterwards.
- He smells the blankets and tells me when they need to be washed (thanks a lot, Hootie), and he smells the milk in the fridge to tell me if it's gone bad.
- We go to the temple together. And we go again. And again. This week, we worked Thursday night, he took his dad on Friday morning, we worked Friday night, and we worked Saturday afternoon (and got to be patrons for half the shift because of a winter storm that kept pretty much everyone away from the temple, both workers and patrons).
- And while I clean the bathrooms, and dust, and wash the windows occasionally, he'll pull out the vacuum almost everyday.
As much as neither of us likes our current living situation (the toilet seats are too round and short for him, and I miss all of my beautiful things), we have made it work.
And that's what I wanted to tell the couple in "Marriage Story". You can do this. You can make it work. You just have to back off your pride and root for yourselves!
As I drove John to the airport this morning, I was telling him how much I love him, and I told him that I now know that I would never divorce him. Funny, right? It's true--if we have successfully survived the past 15 months, we can survive anything.
And then I drove myself home, walked in the apartment alone (bringing in his suit that he didn't want to get furred up in the back seat of Greenie), climbed the stupid stairs that we hate so much and saw this:
I'll even forgive him for using my pink temple card paper ;-)
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