Thirty

 Herself speaks.

Tuesday was the 30th anniversary of Beloved Husband's and my wedding. Thirty years. That's a long time to be married. I feel as though we deserve a medal or something.

He had to leave on a business trip midday that day. He spent the previous evening packing/preparing, and went to work for a few hours that morning, before leaving just after lunchtime. I am not sure when he will be back -- perhaps this evening, perhaps tomorrow. With a little luck, we'll be able to have a celebratory meal in honor of our anniversary this coming weekend. 

In some kind of "the Universe is Testing Me" situation, the following things also happened Tuesday: one of the wheels of the garage door fell off of its tracks; and the landscapers (who have been ever-so-slowly and honestly, rather sloppily, repairing the sprinkler system) managed to blow a fuse/trip a circuit, so that none of the outside outlets work, nor do the outlets in the garage -- including the one hosting the garage fridge. And meanwhile, I had worked with one of the Offspring to coordinate car maintenance for them this week, with the assumption that they could use my car if needed, and I could in turn use Beloved Husband's truck; but due to the nature of the business trip, he needed to take the truck. 

Oy.

I tried for about 45 minute to reposition the garage door wheel back on the track, but without success. Fortunately, I was able to close the door, and I can just park outside until it is resolved. An annoyance, but not terrible. I tried off an on for about an hour and a half over the past two days to resolve the circuit breaker issue, but no amount of my manipulating the circuits or the GFIs I could find solved the problem. Again, an annoyance, but not life-threatening. (The main difficulty with these two problems was the limbo-ing around the things in the garage to get to where I needed to stand to tackle the issues. That was capital-F Frustrating.) And the Offspring and I coordinated our schedules to share my car. 

The hardest part of all was perhaps not giving in to the temptation to be annoyed that Beloved Husband had to be away, and thus was unavailable, to help with the issues. What good would it do, to be angry? None. Feelings with nowhere to go are unhelpful.

One thing that I have learned after thirty years of marriage, is this:

The current social mindset that one marries a person who is one's Everything, is absolutely terrible. 

It's romantic, in a way, to want to portray one's spouse as friend, lover, co-parent, all one ever needs. But that is a tremendous burden to place on another person. And realistically, it is a burden that cannot be carried. There will be times when a spouse will be busy, out of town, or otherwise not physically or emotionally available. Sometimes there isn't bandwidth to come to the aid of another person, or even to listen empathetically. This is especially true for certain types of professions, such as the one that Beloved Husband and I have. 

It's up to each person to build their own support structure to provide assistance, a listening ear, a meal, if their spouse cannot do so. It's necessary.

This might be the ultimate issue: I need to work on my own village. The number of people I can comfortably call in times of need, can be counted on one hand with fingers left over; and the number of people who are in physical proximity to me and could conceivably turn up to render aid are nearly nil. 

So much easier said than done. 

Really, I would like not to have to reach out to anyone else, ever. That's a bit of a lonely existence, though. Plus, I like to help other people; surely there are individuals like me, would would be happy to help me on occasion? One would hope. I don't know. 

This all sounds very much like a "me" problem. 

I'll work on it.

After I fix the garage door, and the circuits.