Thinking a lot about this question of why I'm so fed up. Is it because DB isn't "working"? Is it because WAW isn't noticing the supremely awesomely cool changes that have turned me into a Super, an 11 on the Manly scale of Absolute Hunkiliciousness (but this one goes to 11)? Is it because WAW hasn't fallen into my arms, dragged me upstairs for an all-afternoon romp in the bedchamber, and then professed her undying love (and admiration for my Eleventy-ness)?
I don't think so.
I think what's irritating me is the fundamental injustice of it all -- not of the D, per se, but of a daily life where I am constructed and reconstructed by WAW to suit her purposes.
Now I get the whole "no control" thing, and this is clearly a reaction to that, but it vexes no less because of it.
I think, too, I'm futurizing a bit. For sake of argument, assume there's a reconciliation (I expect there won't be, but play along). If I'm not "me" after the DB process -- through GAL, 180s, and the School of Hard WAW Knocks, I change -- and if she's not her, then who are we? When I think of the phrase "save the marriage," I think of the marriage in Time Period T. But at the end of the reconciliation process, it is Time Period T+1. Wouldn't it be ironic if we didn't like each other in T+1? Now that theoretical possibility is waaaaaayyyyyyy down the road (in fact probably not at the end of my road), but nevertheless it is a bit of poser.
I think about an officer I knew before, during, and after Iraq. I always had a modicum of respect for him before the war. He was efficient, knowledgeable, and basically unoffensive. But during the war he was given a command, and in that position was a disaster. Overly cautious, hesitant, a**-covering, meek, bureaucratic. He tacked as closely to the regulations as possible, at a time and place where virtue was not its own reward -- where there was a mission to be accomplished (and not in the W sense of the phrase!). The pressures of combat command brought out the qualities that were surely there all along, but which didn't matter in T -- but surely mattered in T+1. Now I despise the guy -- wouldn't p*ss on him to put out the flames if I saw him on fire.
So this gives me pause to reflect on who I am, who WAW is, who I want to be, and -- perhaps most importantly -- my concerns that, since she's not (to my knowledge) DB'ing, WAW will not grow in the same way I am.
And that would be supremely ironic. WAW drops the bomb, I DB; bomb defused; then I drop the bomb because I no longer want to be married to xWAW!
Anyway, all speculation and futurizing and neither here nor there in terms of today -- work, kids, no GAL today -- but the kind of thing that creeps into the brain in the heat of the night, when I got troubles wall-to-wall. Sing it, Brother Ray.
