Every day in my life starts the same: I walk out into the kitchen, where I smell the remnants of the coffee my husband brewed before he left. It smells bitter — the coffee turning rank as it loses its freshness, a morning ghost.
Some variation of my four young children will be assembled on the kitchen stools and looking at them, I feel the weight of the morning tasks bearing down on me immediately. Teeth to be brushed, hair to be combed and fixed, folders to find, lunches to pack, breakfast to make, OMG where are your shoes and why didn’t you tell me you had to bring in 100 pieces of something today?
I feel defeated before the day has even begun and each day, I find myself not wanting to get out of bed more and more. Each day, I find myself wishing for the days he used to kiss me goodbye, when he would wake me with a hug, when our mornings were not spent in two completely different worlds — him responsible for walking out the door while I am responsible for, well, everything else.
It feels unfair in a way, but I've been married long enough now to know that the comparison game is one with no winners and this too shall pass and insert other clichés here. But the truth is, I miss my husband.
I spend my mornings without him, I spend all day alone with our not-school-aged children, while working from home and I spend my evenings alone without him.
He's gone before I wake up, home long enough to slog through the exhausting routine of dinner, baths and bedtime, and then he is gone again, to his second job: the business he's growing in its early infancy stages, when it requires relentless time and attention.
My evenings are spent just as my mornings are: alone and exhausted, tense in my bed, my ears always straining for the children I know will interrupt whatever rest I desperately long for.
I feel completely and utterly alone.
Truth be told, my husband and I are simply in a season that requires some separation right now and it probably won’t get any better anytime soon.
Part of me berates myself for being so selfish. He’s working, after all, not cheating on me or heading out on a “boys’ trip,” and I should be grateful to have a man that works so hard.
But is it wrong that I’m just … lonely?
What exactly is the point of working so hard if this is the life it has led to? A life of separate worlds, a life where I take care of kids and home and school and work my own full-time job 24/7, and nary the two shall meet?
Aren’t we supposed to be enjoying the fruits of our labor? Isn’t the point of being married to be a team? I think back to a saying I heard once that commented on how you can never be as lonely as you are when you’re alone in a marriage and it feels so very true to me.
Truth be told, my husband and I are simply in a season that requires some separation right now and it probably won’t get any better anytime soon. Struggling with that does not make me a bad wife, woman or mom.
No one is meant to be alone all of the time and no human on the planet does well with isolation. In our modern-day parenting, we seem to have somehow forgotten that and expect moms to be totally cool with flying solo all of the time.
I’m not cool with it. I’m not a robot. I need interaction and a break and someone to talk to at the end of the day and that simply makes me human.
So, in this season of separation right now, I am learning to give myself a break and to express to my husband — the man who actually leaves the house and interacts with adults all day, every day, unlike me — how I am feeling. It’s silly to expect he knows my life or my struggles, and it’s silly to expect that I can just wish them away.
It’s never easy, this marriage stuff, and in this season of struggle and separation, all I can do is be honest with myself and hope that, someday, we find our way back to each other once again.
