Dear Husband,
I’m trying to understand your world. The world where you go to work, have conversations with adults, sit in a quiet room and work without being interrupted by dirty diapers, tantrums, whining, skinned knees, or stolen toys. I’m trying to be gracious because you love your job and that is a wonderful thing. I’m trying to be understanding because you work so hard for our family. You work long hours and do things you don’t want to do so that I can stay home with our kids.
But darling. It’s so hard during the day without you here.
Your presence brings balance to the chaos that is my life. When you’re around, I can almost feel like an adult again. You take the weight off and I dread the morning when you leave again. Because when you leave, you take the peace and quiet with you.
When it’s just me and the kids, I feel stupider. See? That’s not even a word and I’m using it shamelessly because these kids make me stupid. I used to have adult conversations. I used to have opinions on the world, on politics, on things that mattered. I still have opinions, but I can’t find them. If you see them, please put them on a shelf away from the kids. I really don’t want them to get peanut butter on my opinions.
When I’m home alone with a four year old, a two year old, and a five month old, I feel like this is it for me. I’ve peaked. At 28 years old, I have done all that I’m going to do with my life, so I better be stinking AMAZING at it. Because if I fail at this stay at home mom thing then I’ve failed at life and that cannot happen.
So then I put all this pressure on myself. I want our kids to be happy. I want them to be not hungry. (Why do they always want to eat?) I want them to be clean. I want our house to be clean. I want to have dinner on the table and the dishes washed when you get home because this is my full time job and I’m old school like that but sometimes I can’t get it together and my life is just one long run on sentence.
And that is why, dear husband, I angry text you at noon. Ok fine. I angry text you at 10. BAH. Ok. 9 o’clock! I angry text you thirty minutes after you leave because that is just how it is. I don’t know why I feel like you need to know that all hell broke loose the moment you closed the door. In the back of my mind, I know I shouldn’t. I know that you need to get your head in the game. You need to start work and you can’t focus on the job you get paid to do if I’m sending you pictures of the two year old trying to swim in the kitchen sink. I know this.
And yet I still text.
So this is my official formal apology. I’m saying I’m sorry, but I’m not repenting because I can’t promise you I won’t angry text you ever again. I will try to tone down the amount of texts you receive throughout the day, but it’s possible that if I send you just one, single, solitary angry text, it will be 57 pages long.
All that to say … thanks for being the kind of guy that I want to vent to all day long.
Love,
Your Slightly Angry Wife.
