Happy Valentines to my Hero at Home

Wife, I love you. I wish I had better to give you, so as to show that I mean it. But here's me.

I know that's not much. Even though you say it's (I'm) enough.

Either way, me's just about all I've got to offer.

I'm a poor equal to my own expectations, so how could I ever live up to yours? I wish I could give you more: the life of our dreams.

A cozy house for you and our kids.

If I could give you this I would. A home full of laughs and joy and happy days and even good things.

I'm sad that we agreed to skip gifts to each other last Christmas. I understand why we chose to do so. And I suppose we'd chose the same again if our circumstances are the same next year. But: was it worth it?

I suppose in a sense, it was. Our kids were the top priority, and our relatives came next. Skipping each other allowed us to do better by them. But where did that leave us?

Hugs and kisses, but no lasting gifts to give or receive... Nothing to hold other than each other.

On some level it felt nice and right to step away from the entitlement and the gleeful, gimme-gimme consumerism of the holidays. But on another level, it can also feel nice and right to exchange gifts as gestures. And we missed that. Or I know I did.

I wish I had pressed some small treasure into your hand, to emphasize the words "I love you".

But I didn't in December.

And here we're doing the same again on February 14th. Skipping a holiday. I would have liked to hand you something for Valentines. ANYTHING.

You know I've never been into Valentines as a holiday anyway, but it could have been a useful excuse to treat you to something kind.

Some chocolates. Some flowers. Some jewelry. Some thing to symbolize how I feel.

... I do know that material things are just things, that our human greed for having things is a not only absurd and foolish, it's violent to the soul.... And to boldly contradict the very words themselves: material things don't really matter.

I know it's wrong to hoard wants while other people can't meet their needs.

But I do wish I could make that gesture of giving.

I wish I could afford to give you something frivolous. Something wasteful even.

And not just for capitalist holidays, but for no reason at all other than the expression and the intention.

Especially, I wish I could give you the things that could build a wonderful cozy life, lived in comfort and ease. That's where I'd like to see you.

But wishing big for a bold future hasn't brought as out of our lingering present.

I've worked hard for years, you know I've exhausted myself under the burden of multiple zero-meaning jobs.

I've been told:

If you work hard, ANYTHING is possible.

A man must provide for his wife and his kids.

A man who doesn't earn a comfortable living is lazy-- a failure.

You know I've worn the soles right off my shoes and soaked my clothes straight through with with the brine of my sweat, all in thinking that this would yield us a better life... yet here we are still living as stowaways cramped into a home that's not our own. Here we are juggling child care and skipping holidays-- even skipping the occasional meal-- and limping forward on bodies and minds worn ragged: because that's the only way we can just barely afford DIAPERS-BABY GEAR-FORMULA-GROCERIES-HEALTH CARE-PHONE-CAR-FUEL-AND-ALL.... But even that barely just is slipping out from under us like mud from under our feet.

There's wealth, enough for most of the world to share and thrive, and here we are vanishing in waste, while the rich blossom in a sickening lavishness rooted in and sustained by people like us... and people worse off.

We burn through 40, 50, 60 or more hours per week, only to sink in the shallow, petty, and dangerously affordable excesses of unlimited data, endless streaming, collectible junk, and other cheap filler. And that's our only comfort for those foolish moments when we remember that our realer needs-- security, safety, health, wellness-- these things are beyond our means and cost prohibitive.

It bruises my brain, drains my heart, and defeats my soul.

We try so hard to chip out a meagre portion of the good life for us and our kids. We work harder year by year, to close the gap between our very real now and our make believe when... And our joints ache, our health fails, and we lag behind.... still we watch the cost of life climb all the higher. I had hope once but I wasn't strong enough to lift it off the desolate shores of pessimism. I've let the waves dash all promise of change and growth and progress.

But you're much stronger than me.

... Because you keep going, for you see the plain need and even the possibilities where I can only see futility.

I've let it worm into my heart and rot my core with self doubt and a prevailing sense of defeat... of being something slated below the barest mediocrity.

You wouldn't ever try as hard as I have to give up.

There've been so many times where I've blown past burnout and considered myself nothing but spent coals and cold ash.

... Times where I've weighed all my failures and acknowledged my lack. Times where I've considered my deteriorated health and looked at my goals as impossibly distant-- as fairy-tale wishes entertained by a fool... times where I've fully, truly believed that I was nothing more than a wasted effort with no potential beyond disappointment.

There've been times where I wondered if maybe you and the kids wouldn't be better without me.

At the best of those times I wish I could give and be more, because 'me' simply isn't enough.

At the worst of those times, I mourn my presence in your life and regret myself as a burden.

Yet, you call me back with hidden kindness and the brutalist honesty. When I feel dead on my feet you lend me some of your vitality.

And it’s not simply a tug of kind words— more often than not you lead me in utility.

Your blatant, need-based realism in the face of crushing odds, is part of what keeps us afloat. Seeing you achieve your career goals and stay working two jobs for the sake of our family is a strong demonstration that even though things have gotten shitty, we’ve got to keep striving and doing any and all that we can.

It’s what’s kept me working my two jobs as well.

A glimpse of that clean, competent, and committed ethic of yours is enough to defog my clouded, jaded, and deadly internal defeatism.

Thank you for talking (and taking) me back from the moral and philosophical and emotional edge.

Thank you for keeping me when I don't even want to keep myself.

I don't know how you do it, and I don't understand why you would. But thank you for holding on to a man who doesn't seem good enough to save.

I wish I had something to give you in return.

Although I guess, I do. According to you me is a good start (and I wish I could just shut up and believe it).

Still, I'm writing this on Valentines day, and we did not exchange gifts. But we took care of our kids and took care of each other and somewhere in the midst of all this you gave me affirmations which I could never feel were deserved.

I would have liked to give you something in return. I would have liked to give you an escape from the hardship and the chaos that is our life.

Even if just for a moment. Even if only through that giving of a petty, shallow, matterless material, wasteful thing.

Now the kids are all in bed and you are too, and all is quiet. This is the time I'd usually spend hashing out a new story.

But all I can think about are the things I want to say to you. And technically Valentines day is over. Right now, I'm blinking away the first hour of the 15th.

And this letter I'm writing, you'll not see until you come home from your 12 hour shift tomorrow.

But the sentiment still stands, and will endure for all the days on the calendar.

I just want to say thank you again for holding on to me. I don't know why you want to keep me around but I appreciate it even if I don't understand it. Thank you for keeping me going, and talking some clarity and sense into me all those times where I've let ruminations deaden me.

If this letter seems too blunt and unromantic to be a valentines, well then I suppose it is.

I wish things were different, I wish they were better for us. This life isn't all bad though. It's hard, it's tedious, it's depressing and it's drab. But I'm glad to have you and glad (also: perpetually surprised) that you'd choose to have me.

I love you