I love my husband. I think the feeling that I am the most excited about right now is how much I love my husband. I don’t think he gets enough credit for holding me together. So I’m gonna tell the whole world the extent to which he deserves some credit.
My husband and I met in college. Right around my sophomore, his junior year we were really starting to develop actual real feelings for each other (beyond the “let’s get drunk and try to get laid” attitude inherent in American university life).
That fall I also got raped.
And I didn’t tell him.
But I went crazy.
I capital H, Hate when we call women crazy. And I can’t find a more accurate adjective for what I was.
I entered into a period of severe mental and emotional instability that impacted my relationships with everyone in my life. I reflect on this and I wonder why no one in my life told me about myself back then. Were they that scared of me? Or was I as good at hiding my inner chaos as I thought I was?
But during it all, there was my friend. So caring. So stable. So funny. So sexy. So god damn laid back. So absolutely in love with me.
So naturally my friend turned into my boyfriend. And then my live-in boyfriend. And I was still unstable. But I had the grounding force of my boyfriend containing my chaos within its shores.
And I continued to function. Regardless of the chaos.
And then we got engaged. And we took a nice long time to plan what was still the most fun wedding I’ve ever been to or heard of in my life.
And then I became a wife. And a wife is something different. A wife has weight to it. A wife has a standard to live up to in the role model of both her own, and his own mothers. And the standard is very high among these women.
Let me be clear, this being held to a standard? It wasn’t something my mother, nor my mother in law, ever held me to. This came from my brain and my brain only. And it was due to my feeling of just being “different” *cough*queer* that stressed me out. My mother and mother in law were both good mothers. And their style of mothering were both traditional in the sense of being caretakers and child rearers in the home.
This would not be my style of motherhood. In fact, I don’t actually want to be a mother. I feel that way for a lot of reasons, but one of them is the fact that I do not have a caretaker personality. And my mother figures both had stellar caretaker personalities.
I cannot cook. My ADHD makes it difficult for me to stay clean. My husband annoys me when he’s sick (sorry babe).
No, I want to engage in a deeply emotional and/or reasoned discussion. I want to connect on interests and vibes and creative sparks. I want to help you grow emotionally and spiritually. I am such a fucking Pisces.
But I’m no good at helping anyone – like not even myself – maintain physical well-being.
So my inability to reach this standard I saw before me started eating me alive. And my anxiety started peaking like never before. And I entered my blue period. This was a period of depression of which I had no idea the magnitude until I was able to look back in hindsight.
Then between 2015, the year we got married, and October 29, 2019, the day I almost committed suicide, my trauma got triggered. Over and over again.
At first it was a few small triggers. Being alone with a strange male on an elevator. At a gas station. Dropping off donations at Goodwill.
Then a rapist got elected president.
Then Harvey Weinstein and Larry Nassar and Brock Turner and #metoo.
And then Brett Kavanaugh.
And then I watched a boy choke a girl in my classroom.
Then a girl got raped in my school.
Then I got assaulted at a Halloween event in Detroit.
Then I almost committed suicide.
And then I took a leave from work, did the best and most intense therapy I’d ever done, increased my dosage of medication, started to love myself again.
And the whole time?
My husband was there. Working on our communication. Working on his own mental health so he could better support me. Developing himself through education and starting a business. Having respect. Being an ally. An ally to me. To women in general. To anyone over whom he has any privilege. To plants. To animals. To the earth.
He helped me develop my understanding of my own sexuality. And didn’t feel challenged by it a single god. damned. second.
He broke himself out of the binary. Became willing to accept the depth of human beings on many grey levels so utterly terrifying for a Taurus.
He pulled us together after a terrible year and turned into the support system for his whole family.
He dug down literal roots into the soil of his own creation, and made the sexiest vegetable garden possible, that was able to feed our family for months.
He has big dick energy in literal droves (with his nose piercing, and painted nails + personal trainer physique, manly beard, and canine teeth that are just a tad wolffish).
He is the ultimate caretaker. The ultimate support system. The ultimately perfectly designed partner to me on this wild ride of a decade we’ve spent together.
I know you will say you don’t need it. But CREDIT babe. Take every single drop of credit I can ring out of my poor mangled heart.
Stay grateful for your support system.
An Experiment with Vulnerability 