In the Hard Times

On the hardest days, I have learned to breathe.  Learned that no well is so deep that I am unreachable.  I saw a drawing today of a woman in a well with a rope lowered down...there were large hands on the rope holding it firmly...the woman was climbing the rope.  I have never viewed my rescue like that...I view it more as those hands reaching down, tying that rope around me and hauling my rather pitiful body out.  Because, when I am in the well, there is no way to get myself out.  But out I will be taken.  I will be lifted up.  Though I may fall again.
How in the world did I get to this place in my life?  I know that I did things that allowed it.  I should have spoken up.....but, I did.  But, I think that I should have been more persistent about my needs.  But, I can't figure out how to have spelled them out anymore.  Really, if someone wants to hear or see, they do....otherwise they are blind and deaf out of choice.  How can you make someone love you when they don't.  I'm not talking about remaining committed.  I'm talking about being truly, selflessly loved.  I've been told so many times that I'm so lucky that I got him.  That I should be thankful that such a great guy married me.  And, I look and I see what they see, and they are right.  If he actually had those feelings and that sense of having thought that I was important at all then it would have been different.  But somehow he has no sense of anyone but him.  It takes a long time to see it.  It has been my children getting older that has pointed it out.  He wants things his way.  Still wants to play his games.  Wants to compete endlessly.  Wants to make them perform harder, better and more perfectly.  He does things around the house so that he can point out to us how we fall short....how he does so much.  He likes nothing better than when I've been gone and come home because then he gets to show me how I should be doing it.  But, the fact remains that I raised our kids when he worked nights.  Slept days.  I raised our kids when he did many different activities.  And getting to raise them is the very best thing that has ever been gifted to me.  Ever.
But the hard times come.  And it's not like you go around talking about it.  I go into church and everyone asks, "how are you?"  or "did you do something with that wonderful husband of yours for Valentine's Day?" and it's hard.  Except I know now that it's not really.  It's only as hard as I make it.  Because really, perhaps questions asked by people who haven't bothered to know me shouldn't matter so much?  When the hard times come perhaps I can simply remember that they will pass. 
It is very hard to know that I have failed.  Whether we stay together or not, I failed.  I gave it all I had and he has never been happy.  Always disappointed.  I've always fallen short.  And over four years ago I thought I couldn't do it anymore.  I told him then that he should go away for awhile so we wouldn't grow to hate or resent one another.  He didn't.  Obviously.  And here we are.  I sleep on the couch.  Gladly in a way.  At least it's a reprieve.  A relief.  I keep my clothes in a dresser in the bathroom.  I spend as little time in the same room as possible.  I desperately don't want to fight anymore.  And I finally am healing inside a bit.  I feel it.  A sense that maybe there's hope for me.  The real me.  Maybe she doesn't have to be gone forever.  Makes me cry even here now writing after he has gone to bed.  Sneaking this time in.  I do long for a day when I don't have to "sneak" the things that bring me pleasure.  When I can have a room to be in.  On a bed that didn't belong to my grandparents....that my grandfather died in.....and he's too cheap to let me get another bed.  He can have it. 
Yep, it's hard times.  My heart aches that I wasn't enough.....and yet is finally, blessedly, relieved that I'm not trying to make it happen all of the time.  My heart is not hard.  But, it is being carefully guarded.  I am asking desperately for wisdom.  In the midst of it all, I want to grow.  I want to be who it is that I know that I can be.  I don't want to be sucked into simply being someone who is constantly responding to someone's bad feelings about them.  I want to live.  I want to give.  Last year, my husband gave about 100 bucks to our church.  Seriously?  I was stunned.  I know that we have bills.  I know that we have things to pay off.  I KNOW.  But, really?  I hope he learns to open his hands at some point in his life.  But, I'm tired of being the one that makes him look good....makes him look generous.  I did it willingly.  but, it makes me feel physically ill now to think of how he really is..  I made him look better in the world.  I wish he would have known that.
I know, it's a serious thing to be "done"....but I am sssooo done.  The hard times now seem to be just trying to know how to be kind and truthful.   All at once.  Because I choose that I will not live those other hard times anymore.  Ever.  Because if I go back to it, I will completely disappear.  And I used to wonder if anyone even missed me or noticed....but, now I know....I miss me.  And that's enough reason to change.