All My Problems Are Not Solved All My Problems Are Not Solved
“Are you going to leave him? I mean it. Should you?” This is my pastor, staring at me with piercing blue eyes, asking me if I should leave my husband. And all I can do is sit there, mute and tear-streaked. For once in my life, I have absolutely nothing to say.
The first year of marriage is frosted with happy, romantic memories. Long walks on the beach. A lot of deep talks by a roaring fire. Meaningful looks. Romantic passion. All of it. At least, this was what I imagined it would be, during those long thirty-six years that I waited for my Prince Valiant.
There were a few problems here. First of all, the nearest beach was at a brown lake strewn with beer cans. We didn’t have a fireplace. We did have a lot of candles, but the cat kept singeing his whiskers on all the ambiance. There were a lot of meaningful looks, at least from me, but I’m not sure Brian was really tracking any of those, so there was angry ambiance. And yes, sex did occur, as expected. We aimed for passion, but really, bedroom antics were not so much the cinematic kind. They were more like the “I’m trying to figure all this out, but I’m a little lost here. I know tab A fits into slot B and all, but I wish I had some clearer instructions” kind.
Here’s what really happens when two people get married: all hell breaks loose.
I mean it. In faith, we stepped up to the plate together, fully committed to God’s blessing and forming a covenant, like, in the eyes of God and the government, and my dad, and all that. This is big stuff. And so, from there on, it’s pretty much a crapshoot. The scientists will tell you it’s entropy. Theologians will say Satan. If I had asked my dad back then, he would have said “booze,” which really is just a combination of both ideas.
When we first moved into our little love nest with the one closet, I felt so fluffed up with joy and marital bliss I might have taken flight. These feelings lasted as long as it took for me to understand what unpacking meant. The tiny bungalow we had rented was the size of one of those lovely showrooms at IKEA. Cute with a lot of great Scandinavian trinkets—no space. And in it, I needed to fit a stadium-sized share of boxes, packed full of pictures, candles, dog beds, and dishes—all from home. As I unwrapped each piece it would exhale homesickness into the air, like decor spores. Also, there was just too much of it. I had three coffee makers, no drawers, six closet organizers, and one closet. For weeks I unpacked, cried, and found myself going mad among piles of boxes as high as my head, weaving around them like a frustrated mouse stuck in a frustrating maze of nostalgia.
What I had not bargained for, among all these feelings and such, was that my sweet husband’s behavior did not match up with what I’d had all planned out for him. I imagined Brian would be a hybrid of Dr. Phil, Ryan Gosling, and Jesus.
Here is how it played out in my mind: I’d be upset, perhaps a little sad and missing my home, when my sweet hubby would arrive home with flowers and wine (of course) to talk, soothe, and listen. Instead? My sweet hubby would not get home often until late, sometimes with flowers, sometimes not, and for some reason he was totally unable to read my mind.
I started teaching at the local high school about four weeks after we were married. Teaching had always been my passion and my joy, but my year at this school beat the joy right out of me. Classes were overcrowded. The faculty was in turmoil—gossip and grumbling was the norm in the faculty room. The building had mold problems, and I got dreadfully sick. All of this nearly broke my little Type A heart. Teaching was my thing. I was good at it and had plaques to prove it: Teacher of Excellence! Risk Taker Award! But none of these mattered to my new colleagues, and I couldn’t put them on the walls anyhow. The walls were made of cold, hard cement that always seemed slightly moist with despair.
So, at the end of a day at school where the police had come, yet again, for locker searches—the dogs so loaded down with loot the officers would high-five each other in the halls—I would come home, exhausted, to our overstuffed house. The cat had peed in the corner again. He hadn’t liked moving any more than I had, it seemed. My dog was joyous to see me; so joyous, in fact, he had chewed up the front curtains on the door for a better view. I could hardly blame him; with no fence in the backyard, he was cooped up all day in our dollhouse and was just about ready to lose his dog mind.
But once I trudged through the front door, taking the three steps into the kitchen, and cracked open a beer, something in me would crack open, too. I would feel better. A lot better. Because really, I deserved a beer. Police dogs were involved. My life seemed to be falling on top of me. A beer or two were completely understandable.
I hated my job. Which made me wonder—if being a teacher was all I had ever wanted in life, was all I was about, and now it wasn’t, then who was I? And if being back home had been so much more comfortable and happy, with a great job and faculty who actually knew my name and frequently gave me awards lauding my fabulousness, was it just a teensy bit possible I had made a mistake?
What was more important? The job? Or the husband?
And if I was thinking about all this stuff, did it mean, maybe, just maybe, that I should not have gotten married at all? Should I have stayed put and invested all that wedding money in a good therapist?
What if I didn’t really love him? And what if my cat continued to pee in this house? Would we ever get the deposit back?
I drank more beer. It made me worry less about the deposit.
Brian came home. There’s this scene in Apollo 13 where all the engineers are faced with the dire emergency of getting the spacecraft safely home, and the only things they have to work with are some paperclips, shiny tubing, and a few sticks of gum. I was pretty sure Brian’s job was like that on a daily basis. Only his face that night told me that the astronauts at his job didn’t make it that day.
I opened another beer and handed it to him. Then I said, “Today at school they found bats in the doorway to my class. I have bats in my classroom.”
“Huh,” Brian said.
I continued, “Yep. Bats. Crazed flying attack bats. Mice with wings flinging themselves at the children. It’s appropriate, really. Fitting. That building is about as cavernous and pleasant as Vlad’s castle. The bats simply add to the ambiance.”
That was Brian’s cue. I waited for him to respond something like this:
“I am so sorry honey. That must be really hard. I know you miss your home and your friends. I realize, too, that today you came to the startling realization that you are questioning everything about your teaching future and your new gig as a wife and all. And yes, you had to clean up cat pee on top of it all? It’s simply awful. I have ripped you away from your home and family and put you in a town where the schools are not bat free. And, to top it all off, we probably won’t get back our deposit. We are doomed.”
Instead, he said, “Well, at least they eat the mosquitos.”
Did I mention my husband is an engineer? Always practical. I wanted to kill him.
So, we fought. And we made up. I tried to keep the honeymoon going to give me something to celebrate after the gloomy job I faced. But I got increasingly angry at Brian’s late nights and workaholic tendencies. And he got increasingly tired of my bickering and nagging. And so we fought some more.
We really did love each other. But we were so broken.
Brian