Writer Ferret at Large

Today is not a good day.

In fact, it hasn’t necessarily been a good week, or even a good month. Oh, I’ve had worse, and there’s the occasional day like Sunday when everything seems to go right but today… today is one of those funky days. The fees and interest that Sunday charges for being nice to you.

What’s bothering me? Many different things. My job, first and foremost. I’m not happy at all with my job and in fact, I pretty much dread going to work each day. Every morning it’s a battle to get myself motivated enough to climb into the car and head to work. It’s not that it’s a particularly horrible place to work, it’s just not the right place for me at all. I don’t fit in, they’ve reclassified my job and I’m doing help desk and customer support tasks now and of course there’s the continual issue of nobody every really talking to me.

Sometimes I want to just pound my head on my desk all day.

Home is aggravating me too. Rox and I seem to be at odds a lot lately. Nothing in particular or dangerous (I hope) but we just don’t seem to be clicking into the same groove like we usually do. I remember way back when I was going to a counselor and trying to stave off the death of my first marriage when the counselor told me that generally within the first couple of years there is always a sort of power struggle in the relationship. She warned me that things would be turned upside down during this power struggle and it was a normal part of wearing down the rough corners and settling into a married groove.

I think that might be what’s happening here. At least, I certainly hope that’s all that’s happening. I see a pretty big difference in the way we interact and it bothers me. I worry constantly that my wife is unhappy and this worry then just feeds into MAKING her unhappy, so it becomes this self-fulfilling self-destructive cycle. I know I worry too much and I know that I’m often a little too sensitive to the currents and moodswings that are in the air. I can’t help it, it’s just who I am. I work on it all the time, yes, but it’s still something that exists in me and needs to be acknowledged even if I don’t like being that way and am trying to change it.

I don’t think it’s wrong to want her to be happy. I have at least learned not to sacrifice my own mental sanity for this and I’m finally grown up enough to admit that I can’t make her happy, but I do believe I can make her unhappy. I’m also codependent enough that making her happy makes me happy. I don’t think that’s a bad thing either. I like it when she’s happy. She’s beautiful when she’s happy. Ok, she’s beautiful when she’s unhappy too, but that’s like saying a thunderstorm is beautiful. It is, but it’s a bit frightening too.

Anyway, I am constantly working on trying to balance my own wants and needs against hers; my own happiness against hers and my own dreams and ambitions against hers. I’ve made the mistake in the past of completely subsuming myself for the sake of another person and that was incredibly stupid of me. I’m not going to fall into that trap again. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t be cognizant of how we fit and mesh together as equals. In fact, I try very hard not to swing the pendulum the other way and only think about myself either. I’m looking for that mythical magical balance point.

I don’t think I’m going to find that balance point anytime soon but I sure hope I’m wrong.