End In Sight

When the World's Most Amazing Baby (WMAB for short) arrived, The Man moved back in. He wanted to be here, I needed the help, and neither one of wanted to miss even one minute of her awesomeness. It was weird at first. We had no idea how to not be together, but our new truce felt odd. Were we a family or not? We just did our best to make it through each day. Mostly we stared at our baby and bought her stuff.

One night we took a walk. I was feeling brave, so I said 'tell me 3 good things about (SlutChild).' He asked why. I told him that she seemed to have some sort of hold on him, and since he seemed incapable of ridding himself of her, and she was part of his life, I needed to know something good about her. He stopped talking for a while. Then he said 'I can't think of anything to say.' 'Really, you can't give me one reason not to intensely dislike this woman?' 'No... and she's gone anyway.' I was skeptical. 'No, really. She's gone. After the last thing, I told her that I couldn't be her friend anymore and she got mad at me for jerking her around and now she's gone.'

When he said that, the tiny flicker of hope for our marriage that I had sheltered in my heart ignited into a flame. Maybe we could do this. Maybe I wasn't going to lose my life partner and the father of my child. Maybe the selfish jerk that I had seen all through my pregnancy was gone.

When WMAB was about 2 months old, The Man and I were standing together in the kitchen while I made dinner. The Man was talking about a friend of his and the foolishness that was going on in said friend's marriage. They had been talking divorce, but it looked like they were going to work it out. I just looked at him and said 'was our marriage worse than theirs?'

He said 'NO! Not by any means!'

'Well, then why do we have to get a divorce? Their marriage SUCKS and they're not getting a divorce.'

He came back with 'you don't want a divorce?'

'No, YOU wanted a divorce, and I didn't want to be married to someone who didn't love me.'

'I NEVER said that I didn't love you. I just said that I wasn't sure that I wanted to be married anymore.'

So we stood there and argued the semantics of the fight where I had heard him to say that he didn't love me anymore, but he claimed that he had really just said that he was unsure about the marriage part. I insisted that this was most definitely NOT the time to try and use lawyer-speak on me. He claimed that being a lawyer made it impossible for him to not use lawyer-speak. See, this is why you have to c-o-m-m-u-n-i-c-a-t-e. UGH! Whatever. By the end of the evening, we had decided to give our marriage another try.

It didn't happen overnight, and it was hard. It still is, but we got here. To this place where I trust him. To this time when we love each other and our family. There is more to tell, but not tonight. For tonight, the story ends here.