Hindsight

I was looking through old tumblr drafts and found a few things I had written about struggling to make progress with my husband. Long term relationships are hard. It’s as simple as that. We started to feel more like family than lovers, we were more like family than lovers. I’m not sure if that was the kids, or his addiction, or just the decades we’d shared. We’re still family even though we’re separated. We always will be. I can feel my discomfort when I read these now. I’m relieved I don’t feel that way anymore.

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I can’t sleep.

It was just a comment, innocuous in itself, but I can feel that I’m dragging our entire history into this conversation. My heart has predicted already: I will lose. My claws are out and I am tired. 

“The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour”, a shitty mantra, but my defences are up, scar tissue has toughened my skin. 

It’s not just the offhand comment, or the snide remark, it’s my reflexes. Those words are sharp reminders of a hundred other wounds. (Some are still healing.) It’s an instinct to protect an injury. So much of what happens between us feels like instinct. (The way I curl against you, the way your hands reach for me under the covers.) 

I see you through the lens of a thousand moments. You’re embedded into my muscle memory. Years of falling into rhythm. I try to imagine what it would be to see each other with fresh eyes. Who would you be? Would I catch your attention? 

We have the best intentions, you promise things, maybe it will go as planned. 

Simple is a welcome break, but life without complexities would bore me. So I’m up again, trying not to wake anyone, wondering when things will lighten up. 

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There’s an ash in my glass of orange juice, distracted, I must have missed the ashtray. I’m avoiding you. Not because I don’t want you near, because I don’t have the energy to do the work. I’m drained. 

Healing and repairing require a bottomless kind of focused attention, a hyper-vigilance I just can’t drag out of myself in this condition. So I roll another joint, I wait it out. 

I day dream about lying on the couch with my feet in your lap, your hands kneading all of the tight spots as we recap our day’s events. I day dream about your face softening for me, your warm smile, your gentle bunny-talking voice. Where have they gone? Who gets these tender things now? Have you shucked them off entirely? I barely remember how it feels to be in your glow.

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