so much to lose = fear

So…last night I come home from work around 10:25 p.m. like normal and the anxiety starts up because Rick’s not home. The driveway is empty, sad and forlorn. I check all my resources because I am so fucked up like that. What resources you ask?  Oh…well he wasn’t in jail (per the county “Who’s in Jail” website) and he wasn’t out spending money anywhere (per his bank account/debit card website) and so…that left me in a total tither.  Too many nights in my past of being stood up by the ex-husband.  Too many nights of not knowing, not trusting, being “left”.  Those oh so many nights years ago have had a lasting affect to my psyche.  I know in my heart that I can trust Rick but yet my emotional response to him not being home when I get home and his cell phone going straight to voicemail…well it was stress inducing. Stress of the anxiety type.  I was tossing and turning in my mind.  My head weaving and interweaving every horrible possibility it could imagine.

This is not the first time.

I barely blog about the scars.  I am fighting them, trying not to give them more air time, thought time or emotional time than absolutely necessary.  But someone told me I was raw, open and that they admired that and it made me wonder, if I’m not lying to myself because I’m not telling things as they often are.  I am recovering but fuck…it is hard.

Last night, he’s not home and this becomes one of the moments when my past creeps in and all the people who have emotionally abused me and abandoned me seem to creep into the room like ghosts of the past visiting, telling me…forewarning me it seems…that Rick is hurt, doing something hurtful or he just might not ever walk back in the door.

I trust Rick.  Oh god how I trust that man.  The man who cannot tell a lie.  Who cannot hurt a flea.  The man who makes mistakes because he’s so softly human and yet…upon making mistakes, apologizes, owns his mistakes and learns from them.  Rick is fantastic…and that is one reason why I barely blog about my fear mongering psyche.  I am …or rather I can BE so fucked up.  I was pacing the floor…but you know in reality I wasn’t even moving.  I drank a cup of coffee at 11 p.m. because I knew I’d never sleep so why suffer while waiting.  Why let it get to me.  I thought of blogging those emotions live but I never want to be so fucked up and disrespectful towards my husband.  Perhaps I should have blogged it as it really was neither.

The hours creeped by.  I told my dear friend Greg via facebook all about my fear mongering and my angst and my desire for a prozac. (please note, I have never taken a prozac in my life…but sometimes I want any pill I can fathom or imagine just to make it stop!!!) Make WHAT STOP?  The voices from my past, the ghosts in the room…the ones that scream at me to not be naïve…that he might be out with some chick…some chick I know..or worse yet he might be wrapped around a tree, laying in an ER somewhere taking in his last breath…his chest now still…while I am hand wringing and hoping and fearing the worst….the worst might actually be happening…somewhere else.  It’s a fucking emotional roller coaster..my brain full of bad memories.  They suck…they sometimes arrive like a volcano…the hot sludge taking me with them…hurting me yet again, while in reality there is nothing in the room and nothing to fear.  

Oh, but the memories, the ghosts of marriage past…they are wicked motherfuckers who come to haunt me at my most vulnerable times.  I think that I have them beaten as often for months upon months they do not arrive. They may look into the window but I willfully slam my blinds shut and wave my middle finger and laugh in their blocked off faces.  I pat my back and say, “ha! There! Take that!” and believe it.

Oh but those slimey bastards, they crawl under the crevices of the doorways, into my room when I am weak.  When I am worried.  Why my heart is thumping in my chest so loud I know the whole darkened street outside can hear it….like that story from Poe, only my heart is not buried under the floor, it’s in my chest wrapping against my sore ribcage.  A rat a tat tat.  A rat a tat tat.  I pace some more.  Where is he?  This is not like him?  Is he with his brother?  Oh wait, I don’t have that new number.  Oh wait, I cannot call looking around town for my husband, I trust him.  I must hold onto what I know is reality.

And then the blinds move, and the eyes of that marital ghost from the past, peer in at me and my heart thumps and I want to die.  I want the anxiety to go away so badly.  I call his number just to hear his voice on his voicemail and I say outloud to the automated message, please be alive, I love you so madly, please don’t leave me…please don’t be gone already.  And then I hear a beep and quickly hang up.  I trust him, I cannot let him see me this way.  I trust him. I love him.  What might he think of my inability to truly trust him.

And hours and hours of this back and forth and eyes seeping into the back of my skull from closed blinds against ghosts, the barriers growing thinner and thinner, my mind racing back to the past, to the pain, to the losss..oh but I never loved like this before, how how how could I take such a knife bleeding pain, one I cannot even begin to imagine. I tell myself that if its something bad, I shall hang onto the memories, the laughter, our wedding day, the look on his face flashes before me and I know that no matter what I have loved, I have finally loved and been so loved back.

And then….just as I’m about to crumble on the floor and beg God to help me, for the anxiety to pass…just then Chloe barks, and I peer out through the front window and there are headlights and my chest sings, my heart sours, my eyes blink back tears of relief and I rush to the door….and I swing it wide open and I wait while he ambles up to the door…weary and tired from such a long day, my poor boy, my rock solid man, my everything…he is home.  And I rush him, I hug him…I tell him “oh my, I am so happy to see you…I was worried about you”.  He was working…all that time.  Working hard for us.  I knew that…deep down I know I knew that….but so many ghosts…creeping in.  I hug him so hard….not letting go.  And he says, “I know” and leans into my hug.

And then later I tell him, I tell him how worried I was. I tell him how much I love him, how much our lives are like a perfectly formed snow globe and how anytime I fear that someone might be shaking my life, how things might break, how much I cannot imagine my life, “our” life, taken away….I tell him through tears….and he moves closer to me.  And that is why I love him. I tell him how hard I feel I’ve worked to rebuild..not once…but so many times…and this time only finding the strength and ability because of him and how much I adore what we have..the calm, the peace, the normalcy of it all…..how happy I am. I tell him just how happy I am and just how much I love him and he…he moves closer still.

Tomorrow morning we are going to Daytona to see his brother and his gf Cyndee again and hang out and have some fun in the sun on the beach.  I cannot wait….be damned you bad ghosts…go away.  We are happy.  Can’t you just go away and stay there?