"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.
