Ten Years After Marriage

After 10 years the living room will look like a forest. There are a lot of time to give gifts in a decade, many of them will be plants. You will love them and loathe them and not bare to think what you’d do without them. You will tend to them, and only very occasionally, let one die. Usually because it was struck down by boys playing football in the house. But, also, because sometimes you just don’t know what else to do with yourself or them.

You will think often about hot water. There will be too many thoughts about hot water. You’ll wonder if now is the right time to start the dishwasher, if it will leave him with enough hot water for a shower, or if the water pressure will suddenly change and drench him in the sadness of a steamy but limp stream drizzling down. Maybe sometimes you’ll want to drench him in that, so you start the dishwasher anyway because by now, what could he do, divorce you?

He wouldn’t. And neither would you. How many reasons why? One: his sisters have become yours and you would never, ever leave them. You’ll feel like you grew up with them and by now you can tell the childhood stories as if you were there; maybe even just standing in the corner watching them all grow, a silent ghost from the future who is learning the stories because years from now you’ll make everyone laugh at Christmas dinner retelling them. Everyone has forgotten you weren’t really there and that alone is something you cannot leave.

After ten years you’ll never leave him because one time your only prayer was to never be close enough to touch his skin again. To die never feeling his skin on yours is all you prayed for. Until one day after months and months of this prayer, you did touch his skin again and you didn’t’ flinch. Ever since, more decades of his skin feels better than that old prayer.

And him, he’d never leave you because one time he fought very, very hard for you. And he won. And ten years is not long enough to forget a victory that painful.

After ten years he will not know what to do with you. He might not remember why he fought so hard to keep you. There will be times when your brain explodes and it scares you both. But there will also be times when he doesn’t know he has learned to calm you.

You will talk very, very fast. You will yell.

You’re not listening to me

You’re not listening to me

You’re not listening

And because he knows what to do even without knowing, he will balance you with a hand on each shoulder and he’ll look right through the thick welts that are the whites of your eyes and say plainly I am listening, but you’re doing it again.

You will nod and swallow down hard lumps of tears and try again. You will try again but slowly this time, with the words in the right order, and one topic at a time. He will listen even if he might not understand.

All the rest of tens of years will be just like this. He will remember his victory of waiting for you and you will remember that his skin hasn’t ever been anything but loyal and a little rough. This will be ok, and predictable, and soothing, and infuriating, all covered in a light and breathable blanket of comfort for all the rest of the years.