Too much has been going on in the world and my life in the last several months to stop by and post. I know, I am a miserable blogger, but that’s what happens when everything happens all at once. We get married, we move, husband gets new position, husband hates new position. I get new job, I like job. He is a hermit and hates where we moved. He quits his job because he is treated unfairly and without the slightest shred of respect. he’s torn down and miserable. We leave where we live and move back to the beach with a friend who has put us generously in a great position to get back on our feet after a long 8 months or so of a lot of turmoil.
I’ve gotten a lot of work. I’m making a solid living for one person, considering all we have been through in the last few months. But for the life of him, the SM cannot find a job. It’s a hard time in retail since it’s fourth quarter and most places have their staff in tact. He thought about being a personal trainer long and hard, but at this point, he keeps telling himself he can’t do it; that he doesn’t have the self confidence and he isn’t smart enough to do it. Despite my efforts at being supportive and non-judgmental and offering to help with everything I can, his lack of self-confidence is too much too overcome. He sits in the room we’re occupying right now all day long, reading books or playing games on his phone. He sleeps until noon, comes to be sometime after 3 am every morning. I have no husband. I have a handsome shell of someone I knew before….but it feels like nothing is left inside.
No matter what I say or do, he doesn’t hear it or take it to heart. He doesn’t believe, after years of being slapped in the face personally and professionally, that he deserves success or happiness. He believes that for every good thing that happens to him, he has to pay the price in some tragic way that outweighs the good. He has made this unrealistic connection between tragedy in his life and the blessings that he cannot get away from. It doesn’t matter what anyone else has gone through, survived through or rose above. He has committed himself, mentally to a life sentence of less-than.
To each their own, for the rest of the world. If they can live in an existence that is less than what they can achieve and go on and not ever push the boundaries of where they think they can go, fine. But this is not OK for someone who so clearly directs the future success of our household. For him to settle for a job he hates and come home everyday, regretful, miserable and absent from our home life is not acceptable.
I don’t know what to do. He has given up and makes no qualms about it by telling me almost everyday how miserable he is and how he’ll never amount to anything. No matter what I say, the results are hte same. Sleeping until noon, absent from conversation. Absorbed in his own microscopic, sad world.
I am exhausted. I’m frustrated and sad. His attitude is a cancer that has infected our relationship. When people ask how married life is, I truly can’t give a good answer. Certainly this is not it. Certainly we both deserve better. Certainly it has to go up from here, right?
I pray every single night (and sometimes during the day). I pray that anything will light a fire in his heart to try again. I pray that the right job will come along, in whatever field is meant to be, that will make him content on his career path. I pray for patience and any words or actions that I haven’t thought of yet to be the inspiration and example he needs, showing him that optimism, hard work, persistence and dedication can pay off.
Until then…pray for me.
ashpash
