I am open to any and all criticism, positive or negative, please don't hesitate to comment on my writing below.
Thank you,
Andi Lutz
There it was, on the door, the bloody thumbprint that I had forgot to clean up. It looked fake, like ketchup, it was too perfect, the outer edges of the smudge were puffed up evenly all the way around. But it still looked like ketchup, not blood, it wasn’t dark, or had the other characteristics of blood, whatever those are. The last time I compared ketchup and blood was probably when I was young and innocent and never even thought of cleaning up blood unless I had a skinned knee. Worrying about DNA, I don’t know if DNA even existed when I was a child. But now that I am an adult I have a lot to worry about. First, the thumbprint has to disappear and I have to rescrub the whole house. The thing about bloody thumbprints is that it makes you really paranoid, even more paranoid than you were right before you accidently smudged that thumbprint on the door. If you are not OCD before this, you will be, if you are OCD, then it makes things a lot easier to clean up after bad things happen. Really bad things.
I woke up from the dream feeling confused. I had a hint of the dream but then it kept going away every time I tried to grab it. That’s the thing with dreams, when you try to recall them they just don’t want to be brought back, like playing “Nanny nanny boo-boo, You can't catch Me” with my mind. Stupid mind, along with forgetting things all the time I can't even recall a dream and I'm only in my 30’s. I never thought it was all downhill at 30, I thought life only started at 30. My eggs are all expiring, my mind is going, I'm becoming a grumpy old woman. Would someone put me out of my misery and just kill me now.
Might as well get up now, the sun's not out yet, it must be early. I slowly inch out of bed so I don’t wake my husband up and tiptoe to the bathroom to put my robe on because it is freezing. It’s probably 50 degrees in the house, my husband's brillant idea. Last night it got down to 17 degrees but we still haven’t turned the heat on. He complains about money all the time and I guess this is his way of saving us some money. He said the basement is warm enough and our pipes won't bust yet. Anyway, the temperatures have been yo-yoing from 60 degrees to 30 outside so one day we could have it on and the next have it off, if we were normal. I wished for normal but the genie must not have heard that one, or I was fresh out of wishes. My comfort seems to always come last in this house, why would I want to be warm and cozy when my nose could be cold as ice cubes and I have to wear gloves, a knit hat and wrap myself in a blanket just to watch tv on the cold leather couch. Home sweet home.
I have to work in a few hours, a job I hate but I can't quit. I've been there long enough that I get plenty of vacation time and I don’t want to go through the process of looking for a new job anyway. I guess I've just given up trying to find something I like and have become aloof. My life is not going to change or get better, I can't really make it better, it is just the way it is. I have not control.
It depresses me to think about these things, it depresses me to think about not having children, happiness, money, a life. So I just try to go on with it the best way I know how. And that way is to ignore all these things that I can't have and try not to make things worse.
I can eat breakfast but I don’t feel like it, it's too cold. I'll just warm my numb skin in the shower until the hot water runs out.
Another uneventful day at work, another eight hours of my life I can't get back. On the 30 minute drive back home my stomach starts to cramp up. The cramps started a few weeks ago and always happen on the drive home. It must be what I eat for lunch. Sometimes I go to the same place every week. I guess I get in a rut and keep craving the same things, I just can't stop myself. I ate tacos for a week straight once, I should try to get more variety. This pain is almost unbearable though, it makes me nauseous. A little music might help get my mind off things. I just spoke to my husband and he is at home, he didn’t work today, he does a handy man kind of thing. He makes his own hours and he is usually home when I leave work and also home when I get home, but he still makes more money than I do, that's what he tells me.
Oh, yes, I know, I have a new recipe I wanted to try. I’m going to make some pasta dish, with a white sauce and broccoli, served with salad and garlic bread. That sounds great and I can have a few glasses of wine. It’s going to be a nice night. I’ll feel all fancy, like an adult cooking and drinking wine while i'm doing it. I love that.
Finally I pull into the driveway and get into the house. The kitchen still has my husbands tools and mail and papers on the counter. Why does he always have to make a mess of the house and he never cleans up after himself? We’ve had a lot of fights about this and he still doesn’t care that he has places for all of his things and they don’t need to be strewn around the house for months before I finally gather them up and put them away. Then he still manages to yell at me for cleaning up his messes because he can't find his things. Well, I was at work all day, unlike some people, who, now, I see are just watching tv and just ate a frozen pizza.
"Hi, it looks like you won’t be hungry for dinner.” I lean down to give him a kiss.
“No, I ate that about an hour ago. I didn’t have anything to eat all day, but if you fix something I’ll probably eat it.”
“That’s ok, I didn’t have anything planned,” I lie, “but there’s probably not another frozen pizza in there for me, is there?”
“No, sorry, last one.”
Yep, that’s my chivalrous husband in a nutshell. Probably didn’t even get out of the house today. Did God knows what, and ate his only meal an hour before his wife comes home from a hard days work.
“Ok, well I guess I’ll just chug a bottle of cough medine for dinner and go to sleep,” I say as I walk into the bedroom to change into comfy clothes.
No answer from the lifeless lump on the couch
Or maybe ill just chug the bottle and take a bath. A bath sounds good, I check the medicine cabinet for the meds, no luck. Mental note, buy a case of cough medicine. It’s my go to eraser for bad nights. I’m not sure if you can overdose from it, I’ve never heard of anyone doing it before. Of course I would be the first and only case of that, I would become famous and everyone would laugh at my odd death. “Who would have thought you could OD from a cough medicine,” they would ask? “Better be careful the next time you have a cold. Hardy har har,” that’s them laughing at me.
The tubs ready and I dip myself in slowly, burning my skin until it doesn’t feel too hot, wishing all my problems could melt away in the tub, but it just doesn’t work that way. I hear the door crack open and I roll my eyes to the ceiling. My husband pulls back the shower curtain from around the tub, releaseing the hot steam that surrounded me.
“Hey, do you want to go into town, I have to go to the hardware store?”
“No, I just got home, I'm in the tub.”
“After you get out, do you want to go?”
“Yeah, I guess I’ll go, I probably need something at the store.”
“K, well hurry up, they close soon.”
Why? Why? Why? He has been here all day, he has done nothing and all of the sudden he wants to leave and go shopping as soon as I get into a nice warm bath. I am starting to steam as much as the water now. And he tells me to hurry up. Why doesn't he hurry up to work and get paid to do something besides sit on our couch or spend money we don’t have. I kick the knob to drain the water and lay there for a while staring at my pale, cooling body. What have I done, I didn’t choose this life. I didn’t want to be this unhappy. I never dreamed of being married and wondering why I did it. I wanted the fairytale or at least I thought I married a grown man that is willing to take responsibility instead of trying to get away with being as lazy as possible. I thought I would have kids by now and be a housewife and a mom. I should be baking cookies, in a warm house, that I have decorated, the way I wanted. I should be proud of my life. I am…I am nothing. Nothing like I wanted.
I wipe away the tears and climb out of the tub, we are off to do what my husband wants. Always what he wants.
He pushes the cart and hates anyone that gets in his way. He can only be in the store for about 20 minutes before he wants to kill someone. I hate this, when I was single I would spend hours by myself going up and down the isles looking at everything, comparing, reading labels. It was like meditating, it relaxed me, I loved shopping. But now, if I even pick up 2 things to compare them he gets mad. I hate shopping now, he has turned it into an angry timed sport. Get in and out as fast as you can. No, bargain shopping, if you forgot something, tough. And, if I pick up something he doesn’t think we need then I can't get it. I am like a child now, I have to ask permission and he usually says no. But, if he wants it, it gets in the cart, through the cashiers line and out to our car, simple as that.
Every shopping trip is like a debate-
Can we have this?
I thought we already have that at home.
We ran out.
Are you sure.
Of course I’m sure but you never believe anything I say.
No, you can’t have that shampoo, you don’t need it. Oh, but wait, I need these dozen donuts.
End of debate.
Our drive home is usually silent, dark, lifeless, just like our marriage.
I forgot the cough medicine. I run the debate quickly through my head and come to the conclusion that he probably wouldn’t let me get it, except for the fact that it sometimes helps him sleep at night but he wakes up feeling hung over. So, the cough medicine debate is still up in the air.
I lean my head against the cold glass of the window and look up at the stars “I wish I was one of those.”
“What?”
“Oh, I said the stars are pretty tonight,” I didn’t realize I said it out loud. Lately, I have been wishing I was anything but what I really am. I would settle to just be a shoe. Or far away, up in the sky, a star, a black hole, a dying planet, as long as I didn’t exist as who I am now.
“Yeah, do you see the little dipper? It’s over here.”
“No, it’s over on this side.”
“No, it’s on my side, I’m looking at it right now. I think you need your eyes checked”
“Ok, I’m not arguing with you about this, it’s not that important to me,” and you should have your head checked. Big dipper, little dipper, right there. But you want to argue about everything, you think you know everything.
If it’s one thing I have learned from years of marriage, it’s to give up. You can either argue about every little thing or you can just decide to say in your mind, “Wow, I married an idiot,” and that’s that, argument over and you win but they think they won. It’s a lot easier than losing sleep and creating more cancer cells. I think that if my husband doesn’t kill me or I don’t kill myself I will probably die of cancer. The first two are more likely to happen but I think the latter has been proven scientifically. Stress causes cancer cells, so which ever way I go it won't be pleasant.
But back on the I married an idiot way of thinking. It has really helped me to remember that I am not the idiot even thought he has tried for years to make me feel that way and crush my soul. I think he probably studied on how to manipulate and brainwash someone right before we started dating because I feel like something has happened to me. He just doesn't blatantly do it so I can't prove it without a doubt to a judge or jury. Maybe that’s just what marriage is about and I haven’t realized it yet. Whichever one can manipulate the other the most without the other realizing is the one in charge. I allowed him to be in charge for so long that now I want my way. I want my independence back. I want what I want without being told no, every time.
I’ve wanted out of this marriage even before it began but for some reason I never did anything about it and now I really want out of it and then he is nice to me for a day and I am happy and I don’t know what I was thinking. But everything he does irritates me, everything he does makes no sense to me, everything he does offends people. I don’t know, maybe I am just not a ‘team player’, I work better independently. I want to be my own boss.
We pull up to the house and I trip over the hose that he always puts over the sidewalk, he cant even just pull it to one side. I have asked him numerous times to please move the hose. And I couldn’t see the hose because he wont let me turn on the porch light so I can see in the dark because it attracts bugs. Why use a light for its intended purpose when not using something at all makes more sense?
I used to be positive and happy person. Now it just seems that I am angry and bitter all the time. And the more I hold it in the worse I blow up when it all adds up in my head. Tonight he has showed me how much I and my feelings really mean to him with his actions, but he doesn’t see any of that.
We lay down the bags on top of all of his junk on the kitchen counter and I put everything away while he leans against the cabinet and plays with his phone. Something that he always complains about when I do it because he feels neglected.
I wish I could act out my convictions. I wish, I wish.
In a few hours I will be in bed asleep and will wake up and repeat a day almost as similar as today. I can’t wait for a day to come when I don’t know what surprises are around the corner and each day is a joy to wake up to. Real people have lives like that, real lives. I’m not just making it up in my head.
I look up and he’s staring at me, “What?”
“I said, did you wash my clothes?”
“You’ve been home all day, why didn’t you wash your clothes?”
“You’re the wife, you should do the laundry. I need clean clothes for tomorrow.”
“You don’t need clean clothes to sit on the couch all day.”
“Sit on the couch, is that all you think I do?” He was starting to get angry.
“I don’t know what you do. Anytime I ask what you do you get mad, so I stopped asking.” I was near tears. This life was not mine, not what I wanted.
“Fine, I’ll do my own laundry.”
Manipulation, guilt, sadness, and the night finally ends when I collapse in bed, exhausted from stress, pain, anger and doing my husband's laundry all night because he is so good at making me feel bad and getting what he wants.