Happy Anniversary, Finn, you moronic, mouldy imbecille.
I don’t know what’s keeping us together. Your bathroom habits disgust me. Also, your diverticulitis gets on my nerves. Your beard is rather mammalian and your genitalia looks like a Muppet. I am disappointed with your sexual advances, still, our time together these last months has been almost bearable. Except, your way of eating hurts my feelings. I do not understand your weakness for hot dogs as it is overtly strange and unnecessarily sexual. Regardless, we make a good team and I admit that your excessive body hair will be quite cuddly this winter. I look forward to the reduction in heating costs through your continued presence.
With my sincere tolerance, Sanna.
Oh my! Given what happened last night, this joke is almost falling flat.
It’s been a week. I’ve been stuck doing pressing administrative stuff and Finn is dealing with something at work that takes a lot of his attention. He has been feeling sensitive and I have been feeling burdened. Tuesday night we did a little activity that was supposed to be fun— write a list of things we would like to accomplish in five years. We aligned on most things, but there was misunderstanding about the depth of the exercise. I actually felt a little insulted about it at one point but we managed through and all was well.
Still, Finn woke up at 2am that morning, couldn’t sleep, was trying to work out a plan for one of the things on his list, and was kind of wired for the rest of yesterday. It seemed like every time I paused, or readied for the next thing, Finn needed this or that, or he was interrupting me while I was trying to talk. I chalked it up to dysregulation. Happens, right? I’m an eight-strand knot when I don’t sleep well. I get it. I’m trying to finish projects and work, but yes, I’ll try to give you my attention and I will be patient with your dysregulation. I logged on for work and got the same thing from patients and fellow staff. My patience was pulled, but it held.
We went for a 16km bike ride, then he had verbal diarrhea on the ride home. I was hungry and hanging on. We got back to the house and I made something to eat. Then his son called and needed to facetime which I kind of got stuck in even though I wanted to duck out to my work. Finally that ended, and I finished something for work. I opened my writing and edited a bit, and then I felt ready to share my latest piece with him. (I don’t share every piece, maybe every fifth one. I write for me. But I actually had been struggling with it and needed to hear it out loud though.) Sure, he said. Between him saying “sure” and me looking back at the screen, he held up his drawing for the hundreth time, again, and interrupted me just as I was taking a breath to read. My patience abruptly stopped. I answered him tersely, and before he could lower his arm, I continued.
“Can it please be my turn?”
As soon as I said it I knew I had said it too harshly, too coldly, too cuttingly, and that the rest of the night was ruined, and I might as well go to bed.
I realised too late that I was operating on patience reserves. Not even reserves, fumes. As predicted, the night was a bust. We worked it out and of course I apologised and we were both genuinely sorry and ready to do better, but on the eve of an anniversary, particularly unpleasant. Today has been a horror show at work and I am the picture of grumpy and so so so ready for the weekend.
Let’s see how horribly I can fuck the rest of the day— I have yoga class, so I am not going to open my mouth except to exhale.