As if my husband getting cancer isn’t bad enough, the shit really starts to hit the fan with news of Stan’s father dying of cancer and my pregnancy complications, not to mention the increasingly heavy stature that is becoming my norm. By this time, I’m topping out 245 pounds on the scale and feeling a peculiar self-loathing that is exacerbated by Stan’s daily 3-hour gym workouts.
At first I thought this section of my story would be difficult to write because life was so hard. Well, I was half right there: life was difficult then.
What I had forgotten, reaching back from nearly 6 years of life experience by 2012 to a younger, more naive self just before my second child was born in early 2007, was that life was hard because I made it hard. In other words, I didn’t see the good things, the abundance, the moments with Krystal that made me remember why parenting a young child was worth it. I didn’t see how Stan and I could have become good partners, how much we could have cared for each other if we took the time to notice each other.
Instead, I coddled my own selfishness; I fed my endless need for a good whine; I cultivated my own crap life.
Unfortunately, Stan and I easily became a team in this regard, as he’d been one to focus on what his life was missing since the day I met him. Naturally, the first time he said “I’ll be happy as soon as…” shortly after our wedding day, I thought he was talking about one situation, one thing; I had no idea he was letting me in on an existential dilemma. Soon after we were married, I found myself complimenting his mantra of lack with my own “I just need…”
Was Stan happy as soon as he found/accomplished/created what he said would bring happiness? Of course not. By that time, he’d graduated to the next big thing, assuring me that he’d “be happy as soon as…”
Did I feel like my needs were fulfilled when I declared a need and it was met? Of course not; by then, my needs had evolved, and the next “I just need…” was pressing in on me like an airbag unnecessarily inflated.
Remembering those years and writing about them in retrospect (but as though it were happening in the present) feels highly unnatural to my older, wiser self now. Thank God we learn!
As these chapters continue to spiral downward, I give my readers hearty permission to clench your teeth at my younger self’s increasing selfishness. I would prefer to gloss over these years and only report the snippets that are pleasing to me, but alas… the sweetness of maturity is not so easily enjoyed without the utterly obnoxious sour-tasting immaturity that precedes it. I promise that Violet grows up a little; it just takes a few things (read: life-altering disasters) to snap her to her senses.
Still, as the story of Violet and Stan winds down, some significant events take place that add beauty, life, and passion into my starving psyche. I’m greatly looking forward to documenting those.
It’s just all that damned whining that I can’t stand.
Onward…
