There’s an anger inside of me and I can’t figure out where it comes from.  Does everyone have it?  I drop something – rage, a car cuts me off – rage, my husband speaks – rage, my husband looks at me – rage, my husband breathes – rage.  Okay maybe the anger is mainly directed at my husband.  Actually, I know it is.  Although, I’m able to admit, I’m partially to blame for the current situation. I know how I got here but can’t quite figure out how to break the cycle.

We have a three-year-old.  And to say the last three years have been tough would be putting it lightly.   My son was born three months before the world went into pandemic lockdown.  It was my third day back from maternity leave, I was ready to get back to “normal” and we were all sent back home, for what we assumed would be a couple of weeks.  Three years later, and I still work from home, only now my position is “hybrid” which means we can go to the office whenever we want.  No one ever does.

My life revolves around my home, and I never got back to living the “normal” that I knew pre-pandemic and pre-motherhood.  During those first several months of the pandemic we worried.  We worried about our son; we were brand new parents living in a pandemic and his health was of top concern.  We pulled him from daycare and kept him at home.  So, like many we were both trying to work full time, with a baby, but most of the caretaking fell to me.  I was a supervisor at the time, with a more fluid schedule and so it defaulted to me to be able to manage the daily care for our son, work my job, and when I had meetings that I had to go to, my husband would try to watch him in 30 min – 1-hour increments.

Talk of layoffs and budget cuts swirled my workplace.  Having just come off maternity leave, I was out of it.  I didn’t know what was going on, hadn’t re-connected with my co-workers, and felt left out of important information and meetings.  I worried about my job.  Worried that I’d get laid off and as the primary salary earner, what did that mean for our family, our home, our son?  It wasn’t ideal.  It was a difficult time for everyone, and we were in the thick of it.  In addition, our son loved to wake up at 4am, maybe 5am if we were lucky.  So early morning after God awful early morning, I rose, fed him, and began my day worrying.  It’s all a blur now, but fights were had, words were said, and grudges were built.  I built grudges that were higher and stronger than any I had ever built before.

One day, as I was nearing the end of my maternity leave, with a face covered in tears, and gasping for air as I sobbed about how we needed a solid sleep routine for our son, and how we had to get on the same page to make it happen because the way we were living, which was no plan and no sleep, wasn’t working.  My husband looked at me, stone cold, and told me to stop crying.  He said he couldn’t speak to me when I was crying so much and that I needed to get myself together.  I was shocked, stunned, and in disbelief that he could disregard my feelings and struggle so quickly.  In our near 10-year relationship, he’s probably seen me cry less than five times, but in this desperate plea for help, for partnership, for a teammate, his response was to tell me to stop crying.  My anger truly began to build that day, and it stayed.

We’ve talked about this moment many times since then, and he’s apologized.  Genuinely, truly apologized and I believe he’s sorry, but there’s something in me that can’t let it go.  I realize I need to.  If we’re going to continue to be a family, co-parent, and love and respect one another, at some point I need to truly forgive and move on.  I find myself irritated with my husband at various times in the day, and if I pause and reflect on where my anger is coming from, I often find myself drifting back to that day.  There are certainly other incidences that have happened, and in many circumstances, I’m just annoyed with his current actions or something else altogether may be bothering me.  But the “stop crying” moment continues to resonate.

Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer on how to fully get it over it, at least not yet.  I’m still working on it, trying to let it go, seeing a therapist, and doing my part to make this relationship better and stronger.  It’s not easy.  Sometimes I look at couples who have been married 20 plus years and I wonder who gave in?  Who had to forgive what in that relationship to keep it going?  Someone did, I’m sure they both did.