#18

Today is my 18th anniversary.  The internet tells me that the appropriate gift for 18 years of marriage is porcelain.  I assume that means something toilet-ish.

18 years, man.  And we were together for a few years before that.  Ridiculous.  I want a refund for at least half of those years.  Maybe just the last third.  I don't see why something that doesn't work is so hard to shed.

But in the spirit of trying to put my best foot forward, I will try to share some of our best moments, without ruining them with my snarky commentary, even though what's in my head already seems like a movie montage rather than my actual life...

We met when I was 21, and he was only 20.  I didn't realize he was younger than me until we went on one of our first dates to a bar, and he didn't order anything.  He couldn't.  It was cute, sitting downtown at a pub, with a guy too young to drink.  We met at a restaurant where we both worked.  I was a hostess, and he was a line cook.  He was athletic and tall and had thick, beautiful hair.  Even though I already had a very young child and a fiancee (who I didn't particularly care for), I wanted him.

Our "first date" was supposed to be a Grateful Dead show in Las Vegas.  In the spirit of honesty, I went to the show with my then-fiancee, but we were very much in the death of whatever vapid relationship we had back then.  I knew the ex-fiancee wasn't the one all along.  But my other love interest (my current husband) lost my hotel information, so I didn't see him in Las Vegas, though I was looking for him the whole time.

Skip forward, and I broke up with the baby-daddy, and fell madly in lust with the new guy.  We had ridiculously good sex for a long time.  We hung out at his shitty house with his shitty roommates, but he got robbed by his "friends" one too many times, so one day he told me he was moving into a new apartment, and asked me if he should get a one-bedroom or two.  This was his socially inept way of asking me to  move in with him.  We did, and we lived in a very cute little apartment in a seedy part of town, where we heard gun-fire every weekend.  The place had French doors and an enclosed patio, and every time it rained, we would pull the couch out onto the balcony and make love surrounded by lightning, thunder, and rain.

This was the honeymoon period, but we weren't married quite yet..

I can't really remember if we were kicked out of that apartment (the landlord didn't like the pot smoke and our total inability to fix anything) or if we moved because of the increasing gun fire, but we moved into a "better" neighborhood, which turned out to be an apartment ghetto (too many apartment buildings in the same place, so crime ensues).

I fell in love with a different boy, but because he was just a boy and couldn't take care of me the way my boyfriend could, so I stayed.  I wanted a bit of stability for my daughter.  And then, well, my boyfriend started getting sent off to open restaurants in other cities, and somewhere along the way (I believe it was Hastings - what a shit hole) that he found crystal meth.  I suspected there was a problem, but I didn't know what it was until a long time later.

You know what?  I can't finish this story happily, because it's all downhill from there.  There were moments of happiness; we had two more children, for example; but those were my decisions too.  I asked him if he wanted more children, and his exact words were, "I don't care."  So I stopped taking birth control and made some siblings for my daughter.  Our whole relationship has been a series of reactive decisions, made by me.

We bought a house in a place I would NEVER had chosen, because his friend was selling it, and she was dying of cancer, and he felt bad for her.  I married him, because my father made me feel like a shameful slut for having two children and no marriage license.  I never got a proper marriage proposal - the ring was shoved in my face in a school parking lot, after a fight about said marriage. Fast forward a few years and another child, and our house went into foreclosure because my husband wasn't paying the mortgage, choosing instead to pay for his crystal meth addiction.  I didn't know until we were days away from eviction.  I saw the signs, but I was gaslighted - told I was the crazy one for even suggesting that there was a problem.

He lied, and I compromised over and over and over.

Which brings me to 18 years later, when I can't stand to look at his face, and his snoring (from the other room, since we have slept separately for the past five years) makes me want to cut his throat out, and his insistence on pretending nothing is wrong (when EVERYTHING is wrong) makes me physically ill.

So ... sorry about the misleading beginning of this story.  I thought I could be in love again for a minute, and I was mistaken.  While I miss the touch of someone who loves me, I cannot bear the look of someone who disgusts me.  I'd rather me celibate for another four years than to let him touch me, because I am repulsed by him.  How's that for romantic?

I know he's a good guy - anyone who meets him would say the same thing.  But it IS possible to be a good guy and a terrible husband. The best I can say is that I hope he finds someone who loves him for him as he is now, since I can't love him for all the things he isn't.

Happy Anniversary.  Fake it until you make it, I guess.