Adam has been gone for three days, visiting with his family and getting in a quick year-end meeting with his accountant.
To say that I have been looking forward to these three days is like saying that my grandma can sometimes be rude – each statement, while technically accurate, doesn’t go nearly far enough to convey the extremes of meaning contained in the sentence.
I love my husband, truly I do. But as I’ve mentioned before, we’ve been together ten years. And it’s not so much that the number of years you spend with a partner equates to a corresponding decline in affection or adoration, it’s just, dude, I need my space!
Adam talks to me while I’m reading. He talks to me when I’m writing. He talks to me when I watch movies. He picks the lock and barges in when I’m having a deliciously toasty hot bath, chin-deep in steam, to make me get out and see a five second clip of a TV show he’s watching where an English Mastiff walks by in the background.
It’s infuriating, but also deeply endearing. It means a lot that he is so eager to share his life with me (even if it is Every. Single. Aspect. of his life). I’ve had friends whose husbands/boyfriends never wanted to spend time with them, who had to beg and threaten and veto guys nights just to get some quality time.
I much prefer the constant interruptions and excited shouts of “Hey Madeleine! Madeleine! Come look at this! No seriously this is way better than the last one, come see!” than a cold, indifferent, stony silence.
But even still, dude, MY SPACE.
Our house is tiny, two bedrooms a kitchen, a bathroom and a living room. We work together two days a week. My other job involves working until 9:00pm so my social life can best be described as nonexistent. We spend a lot of time together.
A LOT.
So, the last three days have been blissful. And this is the advantage of being together so long (Well, this and peeing with the door open). That when Adam leaves, I’m not reduced to a crying, heartbroken wreck, spending every waking moment sniffing his cologne and waiting for phone calls, but instead relishing every single second of alone time I can get.
I have taken baths every night. (ALONE! UNINTERRUPTED! Why does it sound like I have a toddler?!) The first night I was home alone, I cleaned the entire house and -AND!- it has stayed that way! I haven’t had to clean up after anyone but myself. I’ve lived like a monk, in a sweet, warm silence punctuated only by the dry rasping sound of pages turning and Gus’s low whines (Gus is still in the early years of his relationship with Adam and has been incredibly lovesick and missing his Papa).
Then last night, I worked a 12-hour day and when I got home I was exhausted. I gathered some food, a blanket and made myself a nest on the couch where I descended deep into a blissful TV coma.
It was only when I awoke with a half-snort, brushing crumbs off my chest and feeling the bulky outline of a pop bottle jutting out from behind one of the couch cushions that I realized, I AM ADAM.
This nest? This creepy, food infested TV nest? This is what I come home to several times a week. My idiot husband, sitting happy as a clam in a warm blanket, happily munching on cheese and crackers while watching bad TV.
And now that was ME. ME who usually uses, oh I don’t know, a PLATE, while eating. And usually eschews guzzling pop straight from the carton (or even drinking pop at all, actually) in favour of using a glass. Sometimes with ice.
The transformation is complete, I’ve come full circle.
Waking up like that was my own little Freaky Friday, I half expected to feel the stubbly outcroppings of a well-groomed beard as I wiped drool from the corners of my mouth.
It was an out of body experience. And guys? All these years I’ve been looking at Adam in that nest with judgement and disgust, when really I should have just been squeezing in next to him and asking him to make me a cracker sandwich.
I guess I do miss that dude. A little.
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