Sleep...or Lack Thereof

My husband didn’t go to work yesterday.

No idea why. His job doesn’t officially end until the end of the month. But for the last few months, he’s been doing around 4 hours in the office and spending the rest of the day resting at home, watching You Tube videos about conspiracy theories and food fads. But yesterday he didn’t go at all.

He was home when we left for swim team, home when we came back, home we went to the team movie outing…and blessedly, not home when we returned. I thought for a minute he went to work, but he actually went shopping. For leisure clothes, of course, which tells me a lot about his future plans.

My heart and stomach actually turn over when the garage door crests a foot and I can see the undercarriage of his car. I never know what I’m going to get, but it definitely means there won’t be peace.

When my husband is home, I can’t exhale. If I need to go to the bathroom, I have to explain why I’m not working. He wants things. Wants to know why I’m not doing more. Creates drama with the kids that I have to reign in so they can get their work done. Creates drama with me. Heaven forbid I decide to lie down and shut my eyes because I’m exhausted…he immediately wakes me up. I’m literally not allowed to rest.

I probably don’t have to tell you what he’s doing. It certainly isn’t laundry, dishes, parenting, or lawn work.

It just recently occurred to me that sleep has become a form of psychological torture for me. I currently have bursitis in my right hip from sleeping exclusively on that side. I’m not allowed to sleep on the other side because I’m not allowed to “breathe” on James. And I can’t sleep on my back because I might snore or gurgle or make some other undesireable noise.  That was my mistake last night. I have no idea what I did, but I woke up at 5am to James yelling at me, “Would you stop doing that? You’re a fucking horse.”

I fled to the couch, which is where I spend roughly half my nights. I get criticized for that, too. For avoiding the marriage bed. Can you blame me?

Yesterday, while my husband didn’t work, I logged several hours at swim team practice, parented, cajoled, put out fires, shuttled kids to activities, made three meals and two snacks, did several loads of laundry, made another impromptu trip to the pool in the evening (his decision), put kids in bed, and finally made myself popcorn and headed upstairs to work for a few more hours. My husband watched a movie and went to bed.

An hour later, I crept into the room, shut the bathroom door before turning on the light, brushed my teeth, turned the bathroom light off before opening the door, found my way to the bed in the dark, removed the pillow sham and turned back the quilt, plugged in my phone and crawled in bed. My husband informed me that I was “just going to have to start going to bed when he does or start sleeping somewhere else because he can’t be having his sleep bothered like this.”

Now, it’s rare that I go to bed before him or get up after him (he hasn’t set an alarm in months), but guess what he does when he comes to bed or gets up? Turns on the overhead light, comments about why the hell I’m in bed (4:15 running wake up call, maybe?), and berates me. Of course, then I’m angry and can’t sleep, so I wind up stewing on the couch for two hours before I finally calm down enough to sleep. If he gets up before me and leaves, he makes sure to leave the overhead light on just to spite. And also to mention how lazy I am, still in bed and all.

I got up before him for a decade, and actually set out my clothes the night before so I wouldn’t disturb him. When I run, I leave my clothes in the laundry room the night before and get dressed down there. I’ve thought about giving him a taste of his own medicine, but it won’t help. It’ll just give him more ammunition to use against me.

I tried to take a nap a few weeks ago, and he came into the room and set off a musical greeting card and then walked away. We’ve quarreled about his excessive sleeping and napping, so sometimes he walks in and says, “Oh…and I’m the one who naps all the time, huh?”  At this point, I’m struggling with severe depression, and I literally need to lie down and close my eyes just to cope. But I can’t do that. It’s taken me until now to realize the toll that the constant sleep interruptions have taken on me. When he leaves for Reserve weekends, the very first thing I do is put on a TV show for the kids and go lie down for 30 minutes. It’s amazing to lie down without feeling the need to defend yourself.

He got up this morning somewhere around 8. I’d already fed all three kids, showered, and gotten the crew ready for swim team. He happily hummed “This Is the Day” as he got ready to go for a leisurely run. He sees no dichotomy between the way he treats me that the way God says to treat people. I was nursing a sleep hangover from the fury the night before.

Just as it took me time to figure out how damaging the sleep torture was, it took me a long time to realized I didn’t deserve it. When you’re told repeatedly how homely you are (remember the fucking horse comment? Not the first time…) you start to think your only choice is accepting that type of behavior or never being married.

I do have to say...the one change over the past year is that I’ve learned to go immediately to God when it happens. “God, do you see this? Do you see how this hurts me? God, please take the burden of my anger. Please defend me, because defending myself gets my nowhere against his lies. How long, God? How long?” I literally envision myself taking off a backpack labeled "Revenge" and handing it to God. I have to trust that He does a better job of this than I do. I haven’t quite learned not to stew about it, but I’m getting better. When I choose to trust that God is acting on my behalf – even though I can’t see evidence of it – I can fall back to sleep faster. I might salvage some joy in the day after. I can find a few glimmers of hope. And I can call my husband's behavior what it is without welling up with hatred. There's growth there, for sure, but I can't help but wonder how much I have to grow before God says "enough" and acts on my behalf. Maybe he already is...