Love, Hate

How can you love someone but hate them at the same time? How can it be?

I hate the way he sneezes. He's loud, obnoxious, overemphasizes the sudden egress of breath through his sinuses. His sneezes end with a shout, loud enough to wake the dead - and often me, from a sound sleep. I hate how, when he's sick with the sniffles it's the flu and he's dying and he needs me to do everything while he rests, and if I ask him to do anything at all he staggers around like he's dizzy, faint, fevered, and so very weak...but when I am (rarely) truly sick and need rest, he is going out with friends to help them out, tired himself, or something hurts and he needs to rest it, or he's sick too and it's even worse than what I have, so he can't help with the boy or the housework or even bring me a damn glass of water and he still expects me to fix meals and do laundry, run errands, play with the boy, clean the kitchen, laud him for making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or buying a Happy Meal for the kid.

I love the way he works hard to provide for his family, tireless, dogged, determined to give us everything he thinks we deserve in our lives.

I hate the way he can't be in a room without a television, computer, or game console running, full blast, can't be in the car without talk radio or loud music blaring. The way he uses these devices to distance himself from us, from his family, uses them to buffer him from our words, our play, our life, uses them as an excuse not to hear when his son asks, plaintive and sweet, "Daddy, will you play with me?", doesn't answer because he didn't hear, wouldn't hear. I cannot speak to him, with him, about anything of import, because of the noise, the color, the movement, the distraction.

I love the way he plays, when he remembers we have a son, and that son wants to play with his Daddy, the way he wrestles with the boy, rolls around on the floor or the bed, tickles, throws the child up and pins him down, the way he teases until the boy goes from joyful abandon to rage and back again.

I hate the way he touches me, pawing, grotesque, no finesse, no sensuality. I hate the way he speaks to me, as if I am stupid, dense, incapable of thought, as if his wife who studies religions, physics, and languages every day can't understand politics simply because she chooses not to discuss them regularly, or dwell upon wins or losses, or grouse about the iniquity of it all. I hate that I feel like I can't voice my thoughts, that I have to keep myself bound up in my own head.

I love how silly he can be with the boy, how they make up words and word play, how they create and play elaborate games until the boy falls asleep all limp, warm, and sweet, worn out and peaceful, happy.

I hate how ignorant he is, how he never reads anything that isn't a cartoon or politically inflammatory, how he can't pronounce the simplest words, doesn't even try, misuses them with abandon. I hate that he has no spiritual life, but feels free to judge others by their religion, or makes religion out to be the pastime of idiots, and how he equates my spiritual differences with naivete rather than reasoned choice. I hate that I cannot share my spiritual life with him, and how isolated that makes me feel.

I love how hard he tries, when it suits him, to give me space and time to write, to sing, to be alone with my thoughts or engage in creative endeavors.

I hate the way he always demands to know where I'm going, what I plan to do, who I'll be with, how he asks so congenial but there's distrust behind it. I hate the way he's jealous, the way he assumes that I seek time to myself because I plan to break my vows and cheat on him when I have done nothing, will do nothing, to engender that thought, I just want to be alone a little. I hate that he pretends he wants to put a satellite tracking device on my vehicle just for the fun of it, when I know he wants to monitor me, to spy. I hate that he reads my blog, hunts me down relentlessly on the web so he can read my comments to others and how they speak to me, how he can't give me even the tiniest bit of privacy.

I hate how he lies, easy as breathing, without blinking or thought, just lies because the truth is awkward or shows him in a bad light. I hate the way the words roll right off his tongue, oily and slick, wriggling through my grasp, stupid little lies about taking out the trash, cleaning the cat box, brushing our son's teeth. I hate the way we began with lies, right from the start, lies to inflate his value, to make him shine in my eyes, lies that I would have to be dead or a dunce not to figure out sooner or later.

I hate the way he breaks promises easy as lying, breaks his word to me, to our son, breaks our little boy's heart when he isn't where he swore he'd be, doesn't do what he swore he'd do.

I hate the way he looks hurt when I am so full of anger, how he looks like a kicked puppy when I finally can't hold it in any more, the disappointment, the suffocation, the irritation, when I finally have to speak or go mad, how he turns it around and makes me feel like a pile of steaming shit because he works so hard to support his family and why don't I see what he's given up for us?

I hate the way I feel...obligated, an obligation, not loved or cherished. I hate that I don't want him to touch me, that I resent his presence in the same room, that I rejoice when he leaves town for work. I hate that sometimes I pretend he's dead, that I'm a widow, or a single parent, because it's preferable to the truth...that I am married to a man with whom I am no longer in love, and hard as I try, I can't seem to find the love again, can't seem to nurture it, force it, beg and plead it back into place, back into the empty place in my heart.

I am 37 years old, and I feel as though I will never love or be loved in equal measure, that I am trapped in this misery because you can't just end a marriage over the way he sneezes or never picks up his own dishes or takes out the trash or follows through or any number of other tiny, tiny fissures that make up the chasm.

I love, I hate, that he is really a good man. He deserves a better life, a better wife.