On marriage

My brain is full but the words just do not want to come stick to the page. Perhaps because I am doing battle with myself and the swirling, whirling of my brain. It feels raw and vulnerable to put that down where others can read it, can see it. Even as I long to be seen. Perhaps, as it turns out, I don't always wish to be seen.

The thing about having four small children is that I live in an alternate universe but I can't really tell. When I say I'm having trouble with something, say my marriage or my health, the person I'm talking to will say "Yes, but you have all these little kids." Which I take to mean "Yes, but it won't always be so hard." Hell, I give myself that same advice.

Be patient.
Don't make any big decisions.
Just keep taking it day by day.

Patience. Being still. Those things are hard for me.

Marriage is hard for me.

It's scary to write that, on the internet no less. It's scary to say out loud, even though I do say it out loud to close friends whose opinion matters.

I have high expectations for marriage coupled with extreme doubt that what I envision exists anywhere. I have a dangerous relationship with the word "should" and an embarrassing addiction to Facebook which takes me momentarily out of my own head and into other peoples' lives. I understand, in my head, that comparisons are odious and that the outside of what we see rarely matches the inside of what people experience.

I know many people who find marriage challenging. Marriage with small kids, especially, is a topic I've read about or heard people talk about. And yet. It somehow only helps a little, for a second, to know I'm not the only one. Sitting in the hardness, trying to decide whether to address something or let it go, trying to decide what is something I can work on by myself and what is something we both own, trying to find energy and interest to have a conversation when we've spent the past hour diapering, brushing, wiping, comforting. . .it is just hard.

Last week was our third wedding anniversary. We still have more kids than we do years married. The smoke is still clearing from a couple years of total, identity-crushing life. There are all these small people--eating our food, spilling, falling down, crying, delighting, fighting, climbing, talking, crapping. It is a series of turning in circles and collapsing into heaps, looking at the piles of laundry, the weeds, the recycling, the too-many toys, the too-small clothes, the dog hair, the half-finished projects. It just doesn't feel very fun.