Questioning

I feel self conscious about writing. I feel self conscious about what others know about my relationship with Art. Suddenly, many things I have written are not OK to have shared or rather, it’s all been OK up till now. Up till this morning when I wrote a post and deleted it.

I don’t know what my head is thinking. Art continues to get better. He’s moved on from picking the kids up from camp three days this week to cooking two meals (although he admits that it wipes him out.) He orchestrated our family outing today. When people ask me how he’s doing, I beam. My smiling mouth muscles hurt from the grinning and watching people’s diverse reactions from tears to peels of joyous laughter (is there any other kind?) The way I feel when they ask is the same way I felt during our first year of marriage when someone asked me about our wedding. I stand at the center of warm, pure, good memory. Only with the cancer, the image is not of a moment but of a storm that is now in the distance.

But when I get home, and actually spend time with Art, I am in a place of resentment almost, of discontent. For several days, when alone in the car or house for more than 30 seconds, I wonder is this all there is? Is this what I fought so hard to preserve? What did I fight so hard to preserve? Him? Me? Us? There is no us right now. We fumble towards each other awkwardly trying to do things we used to but somehow falling short. When he kisses me, it’s like kissing a stranger, but not in the warm excited way but in a disturbed, not really sure I want to way.

I feel unsteady about myself, my wifing, and even my writing. I don’t know him. I don’t know myself in relation to him. And I am deeply uncomfortable with that knowledge.

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