The Warm Fuzzies of December
The Warm Fuzzies of December
Today on this day, I’m feeling all the feels. The warm fuzzy feels.
But I should provide some context first.
It’s been a long week with my emotions all over the place, and my husband has been gone for most of it.
Pre-pandemic, he traveled a third of the year. This didn’t affect me at all because, well, we didn’t know each other.
We met the day the world shut down. This is what we usually tell people when they ask us how long we’ve been together. Our first date was the day most people were told not to go back to the office, us included. Thanks to a variety of factors, Covid perhaps being the most significant of them, we had an atypical courtship.
We spent time together almost every day after our first date, eschewing the typical dating rules about how frequently you should see or contact someone you just met. Minus when I had my kids (two of my three were still going to their father’s house every other week), we were largely inseparable and often going hiking or mountain biking or just walking around the neighborhood talking, because, you know, that's what you could do during lockdown. We also managed to buy a house together and marry during Covid, too.
Because we were both working from home during the pandemic, we were never really apart, which has been largely good for us. But now, my husband’s travel is ramping back up.
He was on the West Coast this week and flew home late yesterday only to turn around and fly out of the country this afternoon. I won’t see him again until the end of next week, when we reunite in Raleigh, where we’ll be visiting family. So we had just over 12 hours to reconnect, including sleep. Of course, we made time for just us and catch-up with the whole family. Not one hour after he arrived home, he was helping my daughter with math homework, and he was happy to do it.
I don’t know if it sounds like bliss. It’s bliss to me. But bliss is a choice, and marriage, like any relationship, is hard work. We work hard to connect and reconnect, even with our commitments and time apart. And especially with this time apart, it’s important to really connect and communicate, especially on the things that matter.
I have been really struggling this week with my body size and especially feeling like I’m not worthy of or deserving of my husband. It’s not rational. I know this. And the rational part of me is in control more than the emotional side of me, most of the time, but it’s still there, especially this week when he’s off being his badass self, wining and dining clients, and presenting before audiences who don’t mind that the presentation starts at 8:30 a.m. West Coast time because he’s the one presenting it. I have so much admiration for him, especially for the things he’s so great at that are absolutely terrifying to me. And at the wrong time on the wrong day, these thoughts can lead me down the path of insecurity. And I know I am more than the sum of my appearance, but this is something I am still actively working on.
Many women would love to have a man as wonderful as my husband, I have thought to myself, more than once this week. He chose me when I was smaller and more attractive (even though at the time, I didn’t think I was small enough or attractive enough). And here I am now, and I’ve completely let myself go (albeit intentionally), and I don’t deserve him. What could he possibly see in me?
I don’t doubt this for too long, because I know how much my husband loves me. And there is almost no day that goes by that he doesn’t tell me I’m beautiful. Or says something like, “You have no idea how stunning you are, do you?” And then I’m left to mumble out a response that is usually measured by how I’m feeling about myself in that moment. But I believe him. You might think it gets old hearing this, but it doesn’t.
In our distance, he doesn’t know everything that’s transpired for me this week. He has an inkling about my feelings, because I shared a little about how I was feeling about my new headshots and he read a post on Facebook I shared in seeking recommendations for a stylist who could help me pick out new clothes for my larger body and my now mostly gray hair.
Early on in our dating days, my husband had trouble reading me.
This is not uncommon — I am often told I have a poker face or I’m not very expressive or I look like I’m mad.
At my last job, I was sent to leadership training for Culture Index, a business survey/personality test of sorts that helps you learn to better communicate with and understand your fellow people, especially those who don’t share the same traits as you. Our rep took a quick glance at my profile and told the whole group I was Spock. Laughs ensued. He went on to explain that with my combination of high logic and low social-ability (inward thinking and private), it’s not surprising that people have trouble reading me. He asked those at the table who had had trouble reading me? All hands went up. He then told them, if you ever want to know what she’s thinking, all you have to do … is ask her.
That’s largely true, except I do have trouble letting people in. Well, actually, it’s probably less about letting other people in. For a long time, I had trouble even letting myself in.
I have done massive work in the last few years, and the last six months or so in particular, to really let myself feel, to tap into my own emotions and to express them to others, especially those closest to me. The good, the bad, even if it’s an emotion I perceive as negative, rather than tamp it down, I’m trying to let myself feel it and be brave enough to share it. Now, if someone asks me how I am feeling and I don’t know the answer, I will spend an exceptional amount of time checking in with myself until I do.
Since my husband used to tell me he really didn’t know what I was thinking or how I felt about him, so now I go out of my way now to tell him and show him. It’s probably still not written all over my face, but I do the best I can so he never doubts or wonders about my love.
This has been a good year for love.
Not only did we get married, but two couples we are friends with (all of them mountain bikers we met during the pandemic) got engaged. And one of those couples got married today.
Jan sent me a text earlier this week and asked if I would join her and her betrothed at the courthouse for the nuptials. And take pics. Of course, I said yes.
They will do it again in front of a larger group of friends and family in Mexico in another month, and then they will begin their next chapter retired, living out of a sprinter van and traveling where the adventure takes them. I’m so happy for them.
I was bummed Hubs couldn’t make the ceremony, but as their, you know, wedding photographer, I couldn’t let that get to me because I had a job to do. After it was all over, I sent him my favorite shot of them, taken just after it was official, both of them beaming. Kent was facing the camera, while Jan was looking up at him, holding his head with one of her hands and kissing his face. Their eyes were both shut, and it was such a touching moment.
Later, when I knew his plane was about to take off, I texted him. “I love you, my husband.” He texted right back. “As I was reaching for my phone to tell you this ‘I love you, my beautiful wife,’ I saw you scooped me.”