The Number Eleven
One of my Twitter followers had this to say to me this morning:
@methodusti Hope you had a good 11th anniv. I was hoping your blog would indicate it as a bigger event, anything after 10yrs are milestones.
I tried explaining that last night’s post was interrupted by an anxious husband–I’ll let you guess at that one.
Let me emphasize that our eleventh anniversary is a huge deal. In fact, anything after our third anniversary is a miracle because right around our third anniversary, we were involved in a gut-wrenching separation and near-divorce that almost killed us both. It ruined our spirits for a terrible long time. It screwed our credit up. We almost lost our house. I had to quit my job. My actions, part of which were (in my defense) caused by a bad experience with the drug Lithium (which works nicely for plenty of people and doesn’t cause them to go more bonkers), almost destroyed our family and tried to take down another equally troubled family with us.
It was a horrifying eight weeks. Our son was an infant. We had legitimate marital problems. I was having a genuine breakdown but didn’t recognize it. I had made my life about my husband, and nothing else, when he had never requested it. When I began feeling trapped, I blamed him.
We did an equal number of cruel and icky thing. There was enough blame to go around.
When push came to shove, though, my husband was not willing to give up. He figured out that I was going crazy–I really was going crazy–and that I needed an intervention of sorts. I filed for divorce. People at work knew something bad was happening but everyone felt helpless.
My sweet husband refused to let me go. He endured all sorts of humiliation because of my behavior, and yet he made it clear he still wanted to spend his life with me and was willing to work hard to do so. He knew I wasn’t doing these awful things on purpose, and frankly some of the things he and others tell me I did, I just don’t recall. I can’t believe I ever did them. Thank God I never put my baby, now an 8 1/2 year old obsessed with Muse, in any danger.
So Dante, you’re right: anything over ten years is a milestone. For us, and for plenty of other people, anything over even a few months is special.
Eleven years of marriage and getting better every day, more comfortable in our skins, more secure in our love that is not like the movies but more wonderful because we aren’t characters that started in someone’s head. We have a messy but lovely home; three creative, silly, smart-ass, intense children; two dogs that can’t decide if they love or hate each other; not enough time to have complete conversations all the time; and the best lovemaking ever. (For a more graphic rednering of these ideas, read what Kevin Smith [my favorite Jersey man] had to say about his and Jen’s anniversary, the same as mine & MrBossyPants’). It’s sweet but NSFW.
Songs in this post:
“Angel in the Snow” by Elliott Smith
“Julia” by The Beatles
“Why Do You Treat Me Like You Do” by Donovan (!)
“Lovestain” by Jose Gonzalez
“John’s Glass Eye” by Iron & Wine
“Clothes of Sand” by Nick Drake
Ms Bossy Pants 