Team Player

Every weekday morning, I start the day running. I started to say that Tom and I start the day running but then realized that since he’s up at least an hour before I am each morning, I don’t know that he feels like he starts out running. He gets up early to exercise. I sort of hate him for that. Except, I know it makes him feel better and I don’t so much hate him as I’m jealous that he’s motivated enough to do so.

I’m not. Motivated to exercise, that is. I’m just not. It makes me cranky to even think about giving up an hour of sleep to do something I don’t enjoy. At all.

But my distaste for exercise isn’t the point of this. What is the point, you ask?

Well, the point is that I hit the floor running, gathering the clothes I lay out each weekend for each of the girls and for myself. I ask O if she wants to take a bath. If so, I turn on the water to fill the tub. If not, I leave her baking in front of the space heater and start the shower running. Did you know it take freaking forever for hot water to run through the pipes in the basement up to an upstairs shower? Yes, yes, forever!

Anyway, after my shower, I go tell Alyssa that it’s time to get up. I’m mean, I turn on the light in her room because the light will get her out of bed faster than just telling her to wake up.

By the time we’re all three dressed, it’s almost seven so we pad down the stairs to greet the great exercising Daddy.

He puts down his hand weights (but continues to wear the weights around his ankles) and joins us in the kitchen where I’ve started packing Alyssa’s lunch. He asks each girl what she wants for breakfast and starts the process of feeding our children.

After A’s lunch is finished, I head back upstairs to dry my hair and I hear Tom and the girls finishing breakfast and starting the process of cleaning teeth and brushing hair. Oh the fun. I do take over the hair part of the work if either A or O wants more than just a brushing. And now that she’s nine, Alyssa does brush her own hair. Sometimes not all that well, but she’s at least attempting to untangle the rats that congregate on the back of her head.
I leave for work about five minutes before the bus pulls up in front of the house so Tom’s got that job too.

I’m grateful for him. I don’t know if I say that often enough.

Even when I’m unhappy, it’s not because of him. He makes my life better in so many ways and I know I don’t tell him that often enough.

Instead, he’s greeted on a Sunday morning by tears and sadness that wasn’t about him but that didn’t make it easier for him to take.

I don’t know how the spouse of a person with chronic depression handles the day to day issues that must come up. But I do know that my husband doesn’t appreciate my less than happy moods. Granted, he doesn’t have to face them very often. I’d like to think I’m usually a fairly upbeat person but when I am down, he takes it personally.

Which frustrates me to no end because, duh, when I’m not happy, I don’t want to have to try and salve someone else’s feelings. I don’t have it in me at that moment to make him feel better.

And there’s the problem. I feel put upon to set aside my own sadness, my own feelings of inadequacy because those very feelings have made someone else feel bad.

It’s tough.

But then, marriage is tough and yet we keep fighting for it because in the end, I have to believe it’s worth the fight. The teamwork, the fact that I have him on my side is worth it.