Page 39 of Unbreakable
In my head, I knew thehowandwhyDylan and I fought was more of the problem.
All I did all day was try to climb out of my hole, and I thought I was mostly successful.
I was giving it my best.
But my best wasn’t good enough for Dylan.
It didn’t matter that I was the default parent. I was the one who looked up child psychologist-approved methods of discipline. I was the one who worked to break the cycles our parents instilled in us. I was the one who demonstrated as much healthy coping as I could.
Meanwhile, I was not really coping.
Dylan didn’t even like me anymore. He implied I should leave, that I was the one on thin ice.
How much longer could I live like this? The December to-dos piled up. The family calendar in the kitchen had something listed every single day. Zero of those things were for me. Everything was either for Dylan, the kids, or the team. And on Wednesday, Dylan’s mom would be coming to stay for a week.
Could I tolerate a week of Dylan’s worst traits on steroids? Should I? I was cracking. Crumbling. Holding it together just enough to fool the kids.
But when I started to cry at a traffic light on the way to take the kids to their Saturday morning skate and hockey practice, I knew something had to change.
Maybe Dylan was right. Maybe I just needed to push through it and get back in the game. Stop whining. Stop making excuses.
Step up to my life.
But the thought alone overwhelmed me.
The walls were closing in. I was miserable in my own life.
SEVENTEEN
JEANINE
NOW | NOVEMBER
You ever just stare at the wall after you get the kids in bed
RACHEL
Sure, all the time
Whenever I’m confrontedwith a bout of depression, I sometimes go through this brief high where I think I’ll just muscle through it. With sheer willpower, I could fix my life.
So after the kids went to bed on Saturday, I put on a full face of makeup, a bra that did ridiculous things to my breasts, and my sexiest panties. I slipped a silky nightgown over top in case one of the kids woke up and saw me, but the effect was still there. I cleaned up everything from the day, packed up Dylan’s after-game snacks, and poured myself a glass of wine.
I put Dylan’s game on and watched, trying to fall back in love with my husband after he’d been a complete shit that morning. Not only was he a shit, but I was bracing myself for his evil mother’s arrival.
The Rusties were actually up 2-1, and it was the third period. They might actually take home a win again. And there was Dyl, sending the puck across the blue line, where his d-man sank it in the back of the net.
As they celebrated, I realized it had been a long time since I’d sent Dyl a sexy picture during a game. Maybe getting that part of our relationship in gear again would help lift my fog. Dylan and I are both physical people, so sex isn’t just sex for us. It’s how we stay close to each other. Aside from postpartum times and when I was recovering from the miscarriage, we had sex pretty regularly.
But quantity doesn’t always mean quality.
It’s safe to say our sex was pretty run-of-the-mill. Half the time, it was part of his pre-game routine. We kissed, sure, and he went down on me to get me wet enough to take him. I’m sure if I’d asked him to eat me out until I came, he’d have done it. But he wouldn’t think about me needing that most of the time.
And I can’t say we’d never used sex to Band-Aid a bigger problem. Take that very morning for example. He knew I was right and he was wrong and that he’d fucked up arguing with me the night before. So you know what a good Band-Aid is? Waking your wife up and going down on her.
Is good, try-hard sex once a month enough? I couldn’t remember the last time before Halloween. We’d been in a collective funk since Dyl found out we had to move to Ohio.
Was I not trying enough? Did I need to surprise Dyl more? Here I was waiting for him to serve me, but when was the last time I blew him, off the cuff?
