11/20/20— if I can tell my body to wake me up at four in the morning before I go to sleep, what else can I tell it to do? (before going to sleep last night, found out when R was waking up for work – it was 4:50 am. And it was not early when we went to sleep. Around 10 or 11. So before going to sleep, I talked to myself a little. I remember saying to myself like, “Look. you have 5 long hours, body, to lay here and rest—rest until your heart’s content—lay and do absolutely nothing. Soak up every minute, and then you’ll wake. You’ll have had enough sleep, even though ‘4 in the morning’ doesn’t seem like you will.” and I fell asleep…and I’d set my alarm for 4:24 am, but I woke up at a better time—around 4. Better cause I actually needed that much time to prepare his bday breakfast. I woke up naturally, on my own. And I never wake up at that hour—I KNOW it was only because I talked to myself before falling asleep. I usually wake later, maybe 7 or 8, or rarely, at 3 am to pee. But never four, until I consciously told myself to last night. So again I ask…what else can I ask of myself- my subconscious self- and it will deliver?)
R just said something tonight, like a half hour ago, that I’m still trying to grasp. idk why it’s kind of hard for me to wrap my head around, cause it was a pretty simple concept – he said like “now you have someone who loves you no matter what. even if you get in an accident and your face gets fucked up or something, I’ll still love you.” idk why it’s hard for me to understand this concept. My best guess is that…it’s because maybe if my face got all fucked up, it would be harder for me to love myself. And so it’s hard for me to see someone else loving me despite a fucked-up face, if I can’t first do it myself. Or maybe because of stereotypes I hold in my mind about men in general. But the context in which he said it was: we were doing the nightly cuddle, and I was just thinking about how bad my skin was (having breakout currently) and I was thinking…that it’s almost better?/easier? to be alone when my skin is looking bad because then at least there are no witnesses. But if you are married/with someone and you break out…there is the added difficulty (from my perspective)of having someone witness the ugliness, and…to me, I never knew what a big burden that was to me—to have a witness to my perceived imperfections. It weighs heavy on me, I realize. I think maybe this is an issue I have to deal with: wanting/needing to be picture-perfect whenever he is present, and when I’m not (which I feel is like 88% of the time lately), inwardly somewhere getting deeply annoyed/frustrated. Idk where this concept originated in me, but I definitely have it ingrained in my psyche for some reason. So I was tearing up (while facing away from him) and sniffling thinking about all this and I think he heard it bc his face was like right on my head, but he didn’t press (which I was glad). And later when I relaxed more (after sex lol), I told him all I was thinking, and that’s when he said what he said about ‘even if your face gets fucked up or something…’
And when he said that – I felt a kind of relief somewhere where I didn’t even know I was holding tension. Truly. It was weird, like I didn’t even know I was hostage somewhere, until he released me with that response, with those words spoken sincerely in the dark. Then I looked back and saw that I had been really boxed in by something. I think that’s what I’m trying to resolve within myself right now in the aftermath of what he said: that maybe I had been holding myself hostage in the…appearance department or something, like too much, for too long. Idk. something like that. Standards. Expectations. TBD. God, thank you so much for my husband. May he be the most blessed man in all the world.
11/21/20
“This is our life now noiva. truck life!” – R exclaimed, the first time we rode in his truck was today.
11/25/20— While thinking about how to heal my skin and what mental paths to take, could not think of many things for sure, but thought definitely this: I will not hate my body. Throughout this process, this journey from the pits of pain to all soft and smooth, I will not be grossed out, disgusted, dejected, discouraged, or loathe any part of myself, as much as I can help it. This includes the itching, the skin pain, the scales, the prickly feelings- anything about my body- I refuse to hate or treat as an enemy. I promise to treat her as a friend- a dear younger friend who I love and want the best for- and no matter what symptoms she displays, to do her good with all my heart, at all times, because this is a precious relationship: me to my body. I won’t harm the relationship by jumping to hate or revenge or conclusions. It’s a mental turning point for me, I think. that through one of the darkest times (though certainly not the darkest) no matter what, I approach and deal with every situation with as much love and joy and appreciation that I can. this much I know, at least. And I asked her to please lead me.
11/26/20— last night, R called the flyswatter a “slapper” (“where’s the slapper?”) when he was about to kill a fly after I flipped out about how there should not be a fly inside our place in the wintertime/global warming. And later in bed, he kept saying, “let me squeeze these butts!” to me while squeezing my butt and i was like “what??” and he still kept saying it like that. He knows the right way to say it I think (“this butt”) but he was just being playful. lol
Marriage Journal 