The Stressors

Today I'm told that we are not going to the Buffalo Ranch, a trip my wife was extremely excited about.  It has just turned 9AM as I write this sentence.  She has not told me why we are not going yet.  I am fairly certain she is unhappy about not going, whatever the reason is.

Yesterday, I broke down in Walmart, thinking about how long my friend should stay with us and the kinds of stress this upcoming weekend will bring with the arrival of our youngest.  I was unfocused at work, as I ruminated on our youngest and how he doesn't talk with us at all anymore, and when he does he just lies about everything.  Also, there was extreme weather with tornado activity, flooding my car and reminding me that the last time our youngest was to come over to our house for the weekend he said that he didn't want to come over until the storms had passed... and there weren't any storms... but he didn't want to come over until the rain had stopped because, he said, his father had a shelter and we didn't.  When my wife went to pick him up, he was playing games with his aunt and cousins, making her believe that there was no real thoughts about storms, just that he wanted to keep playing games.  I made a conscious decision to fuck going to the gym yesterday.  At that time, my wife and I hadn't been to the gym in a week and I'm desperately trying to find the motivation to return.  Instead, I ate ice cream from the carton.

Monday, I drove to work in the fog and rain.  My wife remained upset by something.  I have asked her about what is wrong, and she has not told me, saying that if she tells me it will "take me away", and she says she needs me here.  She is correct.  The more I hear she is upset, the more rageful I get.  When I hear about her son or her ex or her mother or her ex-sister-in-law hurting her or making her feel less-than or dismissing her or embarrassing her, I get very angry.  I do no get as angry when I don't see my wife get hurt or when I am not told about those issues.  Which creates a situation where my wife wants to tell me about her life, but if she does then it does more harm than good because of my reaction.  And even if I try to calm myself, sometimes I am unable to do so.  My wife insists that she always tells me what's happening, and I trust this is the case, she just chooses not to tell me at times when she needs me to support her, rather than become angry about the situation.  I was also told that my work would be initiating background checks, which I am concerned about.  I am concerned that they have, somehow, been as a result of my wife's ex and his desire to dig into my past, somehow, and make my job more difficult or less financially sound, or somehow continue the name-calling, character-smearing ugliness that has not stopped since 2007.  I, also, have not received an official notice of my promotional pay increase, something I'm also concerned has ties back to my wife's ex.

All of those days, I have had to deal with the doctor who sits behind me.

That's just this week.
Next week will have similar entries.

In thinking about the stressors in my life, I am able to find many on a daily basis.  I am unable to shake most of them, or feel relief from the symptoms of them. 

I am scheduled to see a shrink today at 4PM.
Her last name is the same last name as the attorney who represented my wife's ex in divorce court since 2007.  The same attorney who helped my wife and ex get a divorce, who presented himself as working for both of them as well as working to make the lives of their children as pain-free as possible in the Divorce, and then he presented a pen to my wife to sign the official papers, saying, "you understand that I'm not your attorney?"  My wife, based on the amount of time all three of them had spent trying to get the details of the Divorce correct, and based on how easily it had all gone and on her ex's expressed desire to make everything pain-free for all involved, didn't see that there would be any problem at all with this.  Just because he wasn't her attorney didn't mean that the work they had done was all a ruse.  It just meant there was AN attorney, dedicated to the ideas they had spent months talking about.