Jun 16, 2010

Resentful and lonely

The thing is, I don't just miss her. I'm actually quite grumpy about her beeing away. I feel a bit abandoned, a little put upon, as if I've been treated unfairly. Even though I know she didn't have much say in the matter.

But she did have some say. Not much, but some. And I can't seem to help but to hold it against her.

Maybe it's because of the way she told me about the trip. The trips, actually. If it was only this one, it would be one thing. But she was away one night last week, and are planning to be away again the next. We're going to tag along next week, but she will still be working until eight in the evenings, and it's still a strain. I want to be home with my wife in the evenings. Not travelling, or being alone, or waiting for her. It's hard, and I'm tired.

And we're moving this week, we're getting a new, bigger apartment, and there's a lot of work to do, and baby is not helping. At all. An energetic ten-months-old who wants to be everywhere and eat everything doesn't make anything any easier. She's cute, though, and that's lucky for her because she's a handful all by herself.

And in the middle of all this, with the moving and the baby and the insufferable barking doggy and a million other things, my wife is away on work-trips and it's actually very unclear how voluntary these were or weren't. I think the answer is somewhere in between - she could have refused, at least some of them. Maybe not the one she is on right now, it seems to have been kind of mandatory for her whole apartment. But the other ones I think falls under the category "it would be good to" and "but people would be disappointed if I didn't". She could have not been going, but it would have been awkward and some people might have been ticked off.

And what annoys me, what grinds at my submissive but rather testy soul, is the way she put this forward to me. How she managed to convey fear, defensiveness and pleading in to one conversation, where she more or less asked me for permission, but at the same time made it very clear that she really didn't want to hear anything but "yeah, sure, we're fine, we don't need you". Much more on the borders of emotional blackmail than dominant leadership.

She was afraid I was going to feel that it would be hard on me, and rather than taking responsibility for that, she just didn't want to hear it. She simply wanted me to agree that it would be okay, that it wouldn't be so bad, so that she wouldn't have to feel torn between her job and her family.

Or at least that's how it seems to me when I think about, home alone in a messy apartment, with a baby sleeping in her crib and a dog who badly needs to pee patiently waiting in my bed. I miss her so much that it hurts, and I'm cranky over that.

I mean, there's two ways to go that would've been okay with me, either one of them.

If she would have said stuff on the lines of "poor poor little baby, you have to stay home all alone and manage everything by yourself, I'm so sorry to put you through this, you're so brave and I'll buy you a present while I'm gone 'cause I feel so so sorry for you" then that would have been okay. I would have felt a little sorry for myself, probably leaned heavily on the "present"-bit, and felt that I was her good little girl and that would have felt nice. I would have been okay right now, more okay than I am now.

The funny thing is that I think the exact opposite approach would have worked just as well. If she would have said something like "I'm going away, that's that, I want you to take care of my child and my dog and my home, do it right or I'll spank you when I get back" that would gave been equally fine. I wouldn't have felt as cherished as in the first approach, but I would have felt very owned, and I would have had a task to fulfill and an order to obey, and I would have been hers the whole time.

And in both cases it would have been okay for me to feel that it's a little hard, and to complain. And I would have been held, and belonged to her, and she would have been owning the situation.

As it was I got some sort of in-between, not either one version. Maybe because she really did'nt feel good over this schedule, and didn't want to take responsibility for it, but more felt forced herself by her job. And then all I get is her frustration, and that's just pisses me off. I want to be dominated and owned by her - not by her job. I belong to my Owner - I didn't sign on to belong to the Swedish Board of Fishery. Unfortunately, she did, and so there we are.

I feel tired, alone and resentful. It's all very unsexy. Now it's time to liberate the dog from his bladderinduced agony, and then go to bed.

All alone, without my Owner. *sigh*

(Actually, in all fairness, she did both approaches at different times before she left. It's just that, that it wasn't how she first presented it to me. And it was the first conversation, the first negotiation, that stuck in my mind. The other ones just feels like repairs. Afterthoughts. I'm difficult like that.)

Missing.

I was sitting down to do some blogging, finally, and the baby had happily crawled off on her own. And then it got quiet. It's true already, it seems: if it gets quiet, the child is up to no good. She was too, the dogs water bowl. I emptied it, and then she lost interest when she couldn't get completely wet anymore, so she returned to me. Now she wants my laptop...

And I'm alone with the baby and the dog tonight. I'm almost never alone in the evenings. We're always two, me and my Owner. My wife and the other mother to babygirl. But she had to go to a two-day job meeting in another part of the country, so tonight I'm alone.

And I don't like it.

I mean, I know she has to work. I'm at home with the baby, and she supports us. Her job pays for our new apartment, for the car, for the dog, our food, our clothes, everything in our day-to-day lifes. If she didn't work, we would still be okay, but it wouldn't be like this. And when the time comes for me to not be home with the baby anymore, I still have two more years in school before I get my degree and can get a decent job. So yes, I get it. Her job is important to all of us, not the least me.

But I still don't like it. Everything is harder when she's not around. I have to do everything by myself, and I realise how much she does around here. And what a team we have become. It took a while, but nowadays, the family-routine is flowing. There's a place for her here, and right now, she's not filling it.

She will be home soon, though. Tomorrow afternoon she's right back with us again. Thats's good, 'cause I miss her.