I am not lost

I went a bit underground for a while.

Crafting has been on my extreme back burner as of late. Life has been taking priority, and oh what a ride it is becoming.

The year is flying by. Summer is on its way out and the days, they are a gettin' shorter.

It's about time I really knuckle down and start crafting again. With everything happening these last couple of months, working on things I wanted to create has been very difficult. Being a newlywed is harder than I had ever imagined. The journey seems to be getting harder by the minute, and all I can do lately is hold on and hope that on the other side of all this trouble, we are stronger and more united in our common goals and purpose. Wanting to take something of myself and invest it into a new venture has been impossible, as I feel there isn't enough of me to go around in the recent past.

As anyone who really loves me could tell you, dear readers, I am not the easiest person to love. I am challenging, moody, hot tempered, passionate, and fiesty. I am stubborn to an extreme, and maddeningly independent to the point of ridiculousness. My dear husband is Bi-Polar, a fact which I may have mentioned here before or may not have, but it is a fact I am being constantly reminded of in our daily interactions. Living with and loving a wonderful man who is mentally ill takes more patience than I think I have, sometimes. Marriage is rough enough as it is, and add in John's disease and the fact that neither one of us has been enormously successful at healthy relationships in our dating history.... it makes a soup whose main components seem to be stress and heartache, and we both take big ol' swigs of it on a daily basis. We are both very much in love with the other, and both of us want desperately to make this work. We're just kind of morons as to how to go about it. While John is off in his meds or if he's in a manic phase.... fuggeddabouddit. It's all he can do to remember to shower and brush his teeth, go to work and come home and eat and sleep. He can't spare the attention, can't make his brain encompass something as complex and convoluted as "I need to put some concerted effort into my marriage and communicate with my wife".

Our first anniversary is coming up soon. We are about two months away from it at this point, and neither of us is willing to throw in the towel yet. We are finding small guestures of kindness back and forth to help us gain our footing on this slippery landscape. Tiny offerings of help, gentle words, a touch of a palm to a cheek, grabbing another drink for the one on the couch if one of us is in the kitchen, text messages that say "I miss you", phone calls in the middle of the day for no reason. These are the ways we are coming back to center, each altnernating taking a step towards the other to meet in our middle ground. I bought him a Root Beer before a long drive to Anacortes without him asking. He offered to drive home, and took the key without me asking him to do so. At the gas station, he got out to pump and pay. I made sure there was something on his seat to keep the heat off so when he got back in he wouldn't be sitting on a hot expanse of leather. I drove most of the weekend while he slept. He put my favorite CD in the changer. He got the appetizer I would want with dinner. I suggested Chinese for dinner with his mom because I knew he'd want it. These are small things, almost unnoticeable.... added together they are making a layer of kindness for us to layer more kindness over tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after. Then when we go to marriage counseling again on Friday, we've sent all week being kind and then maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to say constructively "I need you to do this, I will do this in return" and neither of us will have our feelings hurt. We are trying to do things that say "I love you" "You are important" "I respect you" and most of all "I'm Sorry."

We mean to say "I'm sorry I hurt you, I'm sorry you feel unloved, I'm sorry you feel disrespected, I'm sorry I was unkind to you, I want you to KNOW I love and respect you, I want you to KNOW I think you deserve more kindness than I've been showing you."

I think we'll make it. I believe the challenge to be worth the effort. I also think that as long as I think that, I have something worth fighting for.

I have to run back down to the Drop to do something for John's birthday now. I will be back later to craft. Perhaps we'll see some pictures, later!