“Honey, I Need to Cry and I Need to Cum,” Day 158, “The Me Project,” Day 22, “The Bunker”

I didn’t know how much I liked my husband until I was shut up with him and the kids for a few weeks. Maybe it’s better to say, I didn’t know how much I needed him. My like for him goes up and down. It has for the…22 years…we’ve been together.

Sometimes he makes me so nertz I’m planning his slow but steady poisoning.

Sometimes he makes me laugh so hard, I tinkle a little. (#kegelmore)

Sometimes he is such a huge pain in my ass and, IMO, the clear obstacle to my happiness. I tell him when that happens. He knows.

Sometimes he astounds me with his calm, his strength, his tenderness, his way of creatively and enthusiastically approaching problems, his generosity, his brilliance. He is so inquisitive, curious about everything, genuine, direct, goofy, profoundly strange. I’ve re-fallen in love with him, probably, a dozen different times in our time together. Once, when he was talking about the research he’s been doing on war crimes. Once when he was talking about the research he’s been doing on g-spots.

It’s unpredictable. My heart is fickle.

There have been times that his calm, unflappable, peaceful ways have been very irksome. His heart rate never gets above 50 bpm, he just sort of floats through life, it seems. There have been times that that means I feel like I’m doing all the worrying, all the work for all of us. There have been times that that was true, but also what I’ve come to realize is that a) he’s the duck and his little webbed feet are working hard under water even as he floats placidly on top of the pond, and b) I need an unflappable duck to keep me from drowning.

Now, with this solid wall of terror surrounding us, and the blinding white metallic cold clanging of fear thrumming the inside of my skull, he is my respite, my salvation, the thing that I most need to survive the day.

I have a panic attack pretty much every time I leave my house. He doesn’t. He’s managing. He’s making decisions. He’s grocery shopping. He’s doing the physical there work required to run our business. He’s calm and light and lifting all of us through this mud. I am forever grateful. I’m actually being NICE to him in my gratitude. It’s freaking him out.

He’s taking all of my nerve ball energy in stride, as best he can. Somehow he can absorb it all and not blow up. Yet. Not sure where he puts it, what compartment he allots it. I’m hoping his moments of peace, his runs, his cooking and other busy home tasks, his wrestling with the kids, sleeping with them piled on him in a tent in the basement, his endless reading to our daughter and playing video games with our son, are actually giving him life instead of draining it. I hope he’s caring for himself now more than ever, so he can maintain his health and his him-ness, and thus help maintain ours. Because I need him, we need him.

I’m not afraid to tell him that I need him now. That’s kind of a first. I’m not reserving some of my need and love out of superstition or shame or insecurity. I’m trusting him fully and vulnerable enough to say, “Please be with me on this, here is what I need because I’m about to break. Or… I’m already broken, can you help me find the pieces?”

The other night, I told him that the pressure behind my eyes was too achey and great, and that I needed to cry. And that I needed to feel a big, new, fresh, good feeling…the pressure inside my pelvis was also too great and needed to be released, that I needed to orgasm. I could do both for myself, by myself, if I had to, but I’d rather have him help me with both.

And he did.

Here are just a few heart-melting, panty-dropping things he’s said in the past few days:

“Let me take your mug, I want to get the dishwasher going.”

“You stay here, I’ll take care of the groceries. I already made a list.”

“We folded the laundry and the kids are putting their own clothes away.”

“It’s ok if you sleep, sleep is what you need right now.”

I mean….Come. On. How HOT IS THAT???