That One Summer

I’m crossing the street when Spotify betrays me.

I’ve been listening to a playlist they’ve made for me of songs I’ve listened to in summers past. Music has always served as an extra-sense kind of diary for me. I can picture the bar where I first heard the song Wagon Wheel, or feel the heat of summer night when I played Blackbird for my husband. This particular playlist has a lot of songs I was listening to prior to our wedding and it’s causing a lot of pleasant memories. 

The song that catches me off guard is one that I listened to a lot the summer before I met my husband. A few months before meeting him a friendship became something stickier than a friendship, and I played that song a lot while it was going on. When I met the husband I took the song off my playlists and eventually ghosted on the man. I miss the man involved from time to time but I never really looked back. Hearing this particular song on this particular summer day everything I felt that summer hits, and hits hard. 

The feelings are partially wistfulness for the friendship, but also desire for the person I was that summer. In the stickiness between friendship and sex and not-dating, I was constantly trying to be my most interesting, beautiful, desirable self.

It was amazing.

I was constantly reading and looking for odd bits of interesting news, so I was an excellent conversationalist. Sexual tension is a great incentive to buy new clothes and work out, so I always looked great. Dopamine is a terrific short-term replacement for serotonin, so I felt incredible.

It was terrible.

I was always trying to be witty and I stopped being fun. I was in shape, but worked out and monitored my food to the point of obsession. I was constantly high on the rushes I would get from the guy, but they were always followed by deep sadness when I realized he would never be able to give me what I needed. He left me breathless, in so many ways.

Hearing the song that stops me in the crosswalk leaves me breathless again.

***

Marriage is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Before the husband, all of my relationships were disposable things. They were opportunities to to try on parts of myself: The Has it All Together Career Woman, The Homemaker, The Wanna-Be Urban Farmer. My marriage is where I can have it mostly together, but I can also have a Saturday where I rewatch Archer and laugh like an idiot. I can whip up coq-au-vin after I set my cookbook on fire.

I can also be the complicated person that my mental health and extreme empathy make me. Usually that’s not a bad person, but we’re playing our marriage on an higher difficulty setting. My mental health issues combined with my husband’s autism mean that our capacity for misunderstanding and hurt feelings is nearly limitless.

But even with that limitless capacity, he’s the one sitting next to me laughing at television, putting out my small fires, and helping me learn to be the beautiful, desirable person that can still be herself.  

***

When I get home, it’s one of the few nights the husband has beat me back to the apartment. He’s cooking something that smells delicious, has fed the cats, and has a bottle of of cold champagne. His day hasn’t left him so overstimulated that he needs quiet in the house, so I turn on the speakers and start writing him a love letter in a language he won’t understand.

I play the song I’ve been listening to since our vacation in North Carolina, a week that felt like a honeymoon we never got to take. I play songs from our wedding and we dance a little in the living room. I play the song that I listen to when I’m mad at him.

I also play him the song from the summer before I met him, so he can know that part of me, too.

I’m sweaty from public transit and stopped wearing makeup after our first date. I’m still getting used to my different body and I don’t have a single interesting thing to tell him about the news or my work.

I accept a cold glass of champagne from him, happy in the knowledge that in this moment I am beautiful, desirable, and, finally, me.

Love and Logic

“Do you want my jacket?”

I’m dazed, sitting in too-big hospital scrubs on a gurney. I have been in the ER for about twenty minutes, after a scary few weeks and a frustrating, unhelpful conversation with our local “Mental Health Urgent Care” that ended in them telling me there was nothing they could do for me.

There are a lot of dehumanizing parts of being in the ER for a mental health intervention. My room has a CCTV camera mounted behind glass in the corner. My door is always open, even when the doctor seeing me is talking to me about extremely personal questions. But the worst part, by far, is that they’ve taken my clothes and other personal items away from me. I’m in a pair of hospital scrubs, a clear signal to anyone walking past my open door that I’m here for a mental health intervention.

I don’t know if the room is cold or I’m having a stress response, but I can’t stop shaking.

The husband gives me his jacket and wraps his arms around me.

***

The husband has recently been diagnosed with autism.

 It’s not the kind of thing you’d really notice about him unless you’ve played a board game and suggested house rules or had an argument with him about time management. I’ve done both (the worst fights we’ve ever had have been over board game rules), and wasn’t terribly surprised by his diagnosis.

He doesn’t know it, but I often see his autism as a kind of super-power.

Before that will make a ton of sense, you have to understand some things about my husband beyond the fact that he has autism. He has a warm and generous heart, often reacting to hard times in someone else’s life by asking “What can we do to help them?” He adores his family and loves telling stories about their oddities or speaking with tremendous pride in his younger sister. And, of course, he is thoughtful and kind to me.

Here’s why he’s my super-hero.

The husband is extremely logical. I nicknamed him my Vulcan years ago. Living with anxiety means that I’m always looking for what people mean beyond their words and actions. I read texts with the highest possible amount of brusqueness intended, even when it's not. I analyze all of my interactions to death and attribute emotions or motives that are usually not there. He’s also honest, sometimes brutally so. But I am learning that he never means harm, and that I can always trust him to help me assess a situation. He can focus intently on things for hours when I am frequently restless and jumping between eighteen projects at a time.

This isn’t to say that he’s perfect, or that his autism doesn’t have negative effects on our lives. He isn’t and it does, but I am grateful he is the person he is.

***

I pull on the husband’s jacket. It’s a warm, and a bright color in the dinginess of the building. I’ve told him a few times that I don’t want to be admitted here as an inpatient, but I also recognize that I’m not making great decisions right now and will listen to what he and the doctors recommend.

But when the mental health staff comes in to separate us and talk to us individually about what should happen to me, I start shaking all over again. Sitting in a hospital room with strange clothes and unknown outcomes and having him taken away from me is the worst moment of my life.

His jacket smells like him, though, and it helps.

When the mental health staff leaves to interview him, I wonder what he’ll say. I’ve been a mess for weeks, and I imagine that it might be nice to be rid of me for a week, if only to get his own sense of equilibrium back. Just a few hours earlier I had told him, in detail, what my suicide plan was. I wouldn’t hold it against him if he told me he wanted me to be admitted to the inpatient program.

The mental health staff drops him back off about half an hour later on their way to talk to the admitting doctor.

“What did you tell them?”

He reaches for my hand and my heart drops.

“That I thought inpatient would make you . . .” he stops, laughs. “Go crazy.”

And despite the hospital scrubs and the open door and the people watching us through the camera I start to laugh. And then to cry. And then to do both at once.

He turns me to look at him.

“Hey, you’re going to be okay. We’re going to get through this together.”

I hear all of the logic and love behind his words. Right now, I don't believe in myself. But I believe in him.

Die Young

"Babe?"

"Yeah, what's up?"

I've wandered out into the living room, still mostly asleep. 

"Is your skin peeling off?"

Even mostly asleep, I can hear the slight laugh in his voice. 

"No, I'm okay."

"Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure."

"I just don't want you to die."

"I think I'm okay for tonight."

"Okay, I love you."

"Love you, too."

***

"Do you feel like you were unprepared for marriage?"

The husband has joined me in therapy. Again, I am discomfited by my therapist's questions about our lives together. 

"I don't know." 

She doesn't push. I don't share. The husband only listens. 

Of course I was unprepared for marriage, I think.

"Did it ever occur to you that you wouldn't get married?"

"Of course."

"What was that like?"

I shrug. "It wasn't bad. I would be in my apartment until I decided I wanted to adopt a dog. I'd keep bees. I'd have friends and help them raise their children. I'd have hobbies and work."

"Anything else?"

"No."

"Would it be a lonely life?"

"I never thought it was."

***

I miss being single.

Whenever I bring this up in front of my friends, they are quick to point out "You hated dating" and "Remember that time you didn't sleep because you were afraid your overnight guest was going to kill you?"

Yes, of course I remember. 

The desire to sometimes be single is one of the most surprising things about being married. There are days when I miss my old Saint Paul apartment with its high ceilings and wood floors. I miss having brussels sprouts or kale salad for dinner. I miss having music on every hour I was awake. I miss being forty pounds lighter. I miss being able to pee with the door open. 

I miss being single. 

***

"Hey."

"Hey."

"This is going to sound really high school, but can I play a song and have you listen to it?"

"Sure, what song is it?"

"Die Young, by Sylvan Esso."

He stops puttering on his laptop at the chorus. 

I was gonna die young.

Now I gotta wait for you, hon.

I had it all planned out before you met me. 

I had a plan, you ruined it completely. 

After listening he asks "Kel, what was your plan for your life if you hadn't met me? Nothing quite so morose as this?"

I shake my head."No, not quite."

***

I was unprepared for a lot of things about marriage. 

I don't know how to share space with another person, or how to disagree on how the cats are being raised. I had no idea how to say, kindly, "Don't be such an ass." I don't know how to not play music whenever I'm at home, or how not to judge someone because they hate vegetables. 

But those are small things, rough edges that I expect to be polished off after a few more years together. The thing that eluded me the most during our courtship, and the thing that continues to elude me now, is that I don't know how to tell another person how much I love them. 

At least, I don't know how to tell this other person. 

My husband and I are at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum. He's the black hole to my supernova, the Spock to my Bones. Many of our biggest fights have been over our inability to speak the same emotional language. As someone who revels in emotions and conversations about them, this has been jarring. 

But more than "Ohh, we're on opposite sides of the emotional spectrum" what's flummoxed me has been my own inability to communicate how much he means to me. He folds me origami rabbits on Valentine's Day, but I can't find a way to tell him everything I want him to know.  

My plan, you see, was never exactly to die young, but it wasn't exactly to make it to the bitter end either. I would have been fine living a full, happy life into my 50s and then slipping away, if not into the ether than out of the lives of my friends and their families. 

And then the husband came into my life.

I was unprepared for how much better life could be with him. How loving him would open my heart and help me to love other people more fully. How I would have the courage to do new things that would fill up the empty parts of my life. How I would get out of bed after nightmares to make sure he was okay sitting up alone. 

So when my therapist asks "Do you think you were unprepared for marriage" the only answer I can think is "Of course I was unprepared for marriage. How do you prepare for this?"

I never knew. 

Newlyweds

My therapist has started to cry.

I'm taken aback. It's something she's never done in front of me before. Not when I was describing being sexually assaulted, not when I talked about suicide and the plan I had a few years ago, not when I spent most of a session crying because I was so lonely and sad I didn't know how to get out of bed in the morning.

The husband has been coming in for a few sessions to understand some of what goes on in therapy, why I feel so shitty afterward, and ways he can help. It's been an odd experience, I think for both of us. The husband has been asked to weigh in on everything from how I handle anger (not well) to how I communicate.

Out of the blue one evening, my therapist asks us why we got married.

Hearing that question from your therapist, in a session, is unsettling at best. It feels like she has some super-secret therapy knowledge and is about to tell you that she doesn't think you should be married, or that one partner is holding something back from the other, or that she thinks you might be related.

At least, it feels that way to me.

We tell her. He tells her about how he suddenly discovered that daily life can be fun and weird with another person. I tell her that he is the most kind and generous person I've ever met. Eventually we're talking to one another and honestly forget that she is there. He tells me how much he loves my friends and I tell him that he pushes me to be a kinder, less judgmental person. I finally tell him:

"You feel like home."

That's when my therapist blows her nose, loudly, and we realize we're still in a session.

"I'm sorry," she tells us. "I do a lot of work in couples' therapy, and I tend to see people at the end of their marriages. It's nice to see a couple who's still so in love with one another."

***

Our first five months of marriage have been, well, a lot like the last two and a half years of being together. 

I'm not sure what I was expecting. Our arguments to be, if not magically solved, at least put on the shelf for a couple months? A musical to break out every morning when we wake up? A refusal to leave the house unless we were together? Sunshine and rainbows to magically shoot out of our asses all the time?  

The truth is our lives are very much what they've always been. 

We hold hands in the back of cabs. We fight, infrequently, but it's hard when we do. I still go to bed early while he stays up late watching B-horror movies. We text one another "Do you need anything from Target while I'm here?" instead of "I love you and am thinking about you." We Skype with out-of-state friends, plan and host day-long board game days, dance in the living room to Motown, snuggle the cats, crack one another up. The rhythm of our lives hasn't changed much. 

I find it comforting.

***

We're in a cab on the way home from a double date with some of our friends. 

We're saving for a house and recovering from a wedding, so we haven't been out much in the past few months. An occasional game night, a dinner at a friend's house, but few nights like this one. The ride home itself isn't anything special. Me, enthusing over the drinks we had, the couple we saw, my hopes about our future house. Him, holding my hand, talking about the dinner we're hosting next week, the couple he hopes to see soon, and his hopes for our future house. 

It's just an ordinary cab ride.

Or, at least, it is until we arrive home and the cab driver turns off the the meter and turns around to talk to us. 

"You two seem very happy together," he says. "You disagree about something and can just let it go. My wife and I argue a lot. How do you do it?"

We're stunned for a moment and don't know what to say. Before I can make a crack about us being newlyweds, he stops me to tell us that he has been astounded by our kindness and agreeableness, particularly the husband's. He remarks that we are obviously extremely happy together, and thanks us for being wonderful passengers to eavesdrop on. Eventually, as we thank him and get out of the cab. He stops the husband and says: "I am going to take some of what I learned from you tonight home to my wife. It's nice to see a couple so in love with one another."

***

Our first five months of marriage have been nothing like the last two and a half years together. 

We do many of the same things, but something fundamental in our relationship has shifted. Our arguments no longer leave me wondering "Is this going to be the one that splits us up?" We smile when "our" song from the Thrilling Adventure Hour Musical Episode comes on at home. I begin to work out again, and come home to a smiling husband, happy for his alone time, too.

There is an unanticipated weight to saying "This is my husband" and hearing him say "This is my wife." When I am angry or lonely, I look down at my wedding band and remember that there is someone who will carry some of that anger or loneliness if I ask for help. The rhythm of our life hasn't changed, but I'm surprised to find a harmony introduced. 

And while therapists sobbing and cab drivers telling us how wonderful we are are rare occurrences, I find them reassuring. Perhaps all the sunshine and rainbows I've been seeing lately aren't only coming out of our asses.