Is This The Hill You Want To Die On?

It's nearly 3 am and I am up because I went to bed before 11. I never! go to bed before 11 but I was in such a foul mood, I could barely stand myself. I've been in this mood since Saturday. It's the normal pattern of things, unfortunately. I get really (REALLY!) pumped and enthusiastic and Just Know that I can create the life of my dreams far away from this disaster of a marriage.

And then I crash.

Usually because of something he does. Usually surrounding his complete lack of interest in showing me even the tiniest bit of consideration or love. My husband is verbally abusive and yet, I would say that isn't even The Thing that hurts me the most. Sometimes I wonder how some of my friends who are married to alcoholics can seemingly live such "normal" lives with their drunken husbands. It's not to say they don't face the same issues many of us do but there are times when they actually live and act like "normal" partners. I think it's because even among the drunkenness, their husbands still manage to show them love and affection. Still make an effort to Be a husband toward them.

My husband does none of that. He is all but physically gone.

And that is a miserably way to live in a marriage.

But I keep forgetting. I keep forgetting and forgetting and forgetting and FORGETTING! I keep trying - in the smallest of ways - to act like this is a normal marriage. And when I say "trying" and "smallest of ways," I really mean trying in The Smallest of ways! I long ago gave up all the expectations of him being a husband in the grander scheme of things. But just little things - I mean god damn - just little things, like a casual conversation between the two of us.

Or actually thinking of me when he cooks dinner. He doesn't always cook dinner - he actually loves to cook and is quite good at it but it's more an event for him, something he wants to spend a whole Saturday or Sunday doing. Like last Saturday.

I came home from yoga and he had gone to the grocery store for the ingredients to make chicken enchiladas. I asked him "what else" was he making as I don't eat meat. Usually he will just do some sides - beans and rice in this incident would have been his go to but he said,

"Nothing else. I just felt like making these."

Why should I be hurt? Why should I expect different? I get blindsided by these happenings. Most of his behavior, I have come to know and expect but every once in awhile, he gets in an emotional sucker punch.

And then I get derailed. Become angry and volatile myself.

Human beings are destined for failure, you know that? It's just the way our brains are wired. We are not "very good at doing what's good for us," from a neurological standpoint, says Andrew Huberman, a neurologist at Stanford University. Our brains are wired for complacency, habit and routine, he says and the hardest thing to do is fix the brain with the brain.

I hate my life.

I really do.

That's how I feel right now, at 3 o'clock in the morning.

12 hours from now, maybe eight hours from now, may just in a few hours when it's a more reasonable hour to be awake, I could feel very different. Feel super charged and positive, hopeful and committed to taking my life back.

Until the next enchilada incident. Until the next time he blindsides me. Until the next time I forget and expect the smallest of considerations out of my husband.

Life comes at us. It may be in the form of an illness. It may be in the form of a horrific loss. It may be in the form of a handicap.

Or it may be in the form of an alcoholic husband.

Regardless, none of us get an easy pass to flash as we go through life.

I just can't let this be the hill I die on.