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Everywhere and anywhere

I am still figuring out my marriage. I know not every marriage is as dysfunctional as mine, or else there would be an even higher divorce rate than there currently is. I also know that there a ton of marriages just like mine, a strange, winding thing, less like a devoted circle than a strange mandelbrot set. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this mathmatical shape, a madelbrot set is simply a pattern that is forever self replicating, getting smaller and smaller, but always the same, and usually intricate and beautiful. Some, however, are like my marriage...strange, self replicating, and not very pretty, even when taken as a whole. We go in the same twisted patterns of distrust, dislike, devotion, and even a version of love, although I couldn't define what that love is even with a gun to my head.

We fight a lot, that is true. But there are moments when we are sweet to one another, unthinkingly, without effort, and in those moments I find myself thinking that it can't be as bad as I make it out to be. I don't feel butterflies for my husband, I never have and never will. I don't even feel necessarily attached to him. But I am settled with him, and that makes all the difference it seems. It's like we aren't a unit, familial or otherwise, so much as two separate universes residing in the same space. We aren't connected, but we can cohabitate if need be. I don't even mind the mundane things so much, cooking the meals, folding the laundry, because I do them by rote. I honestly can't imagine not having someone to do these things for. But I don't care if it is for him or not. I do not fold his underwear out of devotion, but out of the need to fit them into the drawer.

We have even discussed the seemingly inevitable divorce, and decided who gets what in our home, when we each get the kids, so on and so forth. But in his mind, this is idle conversation, a way of placating me. He doesn't believe that there is any possibility of it happening, so it doesn't matter. And having been faced with this insurmountable wall of indifference toward the subject, I am beginning to feel defeated as well. Because no matter how desperately I want it, when you find yourself locked up, there comes a time when freedom is more fantasy than anything attainable, and you give in. The only time I feel the glimmer of hope that things may change, that we can end this charade of a marriage is when I talk to C.

C. is my light...the one I feel the butterflies for, the one I love almost as much as my husband loves (or claims to love) me. When we talk, I feel like there is someone out there for me who is so much more then what I have now, someone I can feel anything for. Dedicated to. We have been friends for so long that I have no problem watching him with other women, talking about his life and loves and the rest of the things that I am not a part of to him. I haven't been a part of those things for so long that the detachment doesn't hurt anymore. But when we do talk, and the topic inevitably turns to the two of us, that is when I get the warm feeling in my heart, the flutter of hope. It may never happen. No, it will never happen, but when we talk about it, jokingly, we both know that I, at least, am only half joking. I feel alive when we talk, even if it is only on the phone, and only about what happened at work. No matter when or where we get together, or for what reason, I feel like I am really truly looking at the world, my laughter is genuine, and my thoughts and feelings matter. This is why I limit our conversations to being few and far between.

I am scared of C. I am deathly afraid of two things. One is that he will finally love me back (again) and I will not know what to do, that it will only further complicate an already difficult situation. I don't ever want his love to be a burden, and I am afraid that is exactly what would happen. The second thing is that he will never love me, and I will be responsible for turning this marriage I already have into something worse on false hope. Because as unhappy as I find myself a majority of the time with my husband, I can't help but think it is all my fault, that I don't try hard enough to love him. But why do I even have to try? Shouldn't it come as naturally as breathing? As is does for C.?

So no matter where I go, or what I do, I am afraid to do anything. I am afraid to try to be happy with my life as it is, because I feel like I am settling for less than I deserve. The effort is way too much for how little I get in return. And if I take that leap, out of my marriage and into the unknown, what if there is no one there to catch me? Because this is a huge precipice that I stand on, and the last thing I want is to land crumpled at the bottom.