The last few days I’ve been taking care of Skyspook, who recently underwent surgery. The procedures themselves were relatively minor, but he did need general (which made it a bit stressful for me as there’s always real risk involved), and surgery being what it is, the body pitches a royal fit and requires quite a bit of recovery. It would seem to the body that basically no surgery is minor, not really. I remember a phrase from my transcription days that seems really apt: “surgical insult.”
All things considered, Spook is mending rather nicely, and I’m happy to be his nurse — that is to say that while I’m not happy in the slightest that he’s is ouchy and exhausted from his recent surgery, I am happy to be able to give something back to a person who has given me so much over the last few years and happy to take the best care I can of someone who has taken such excellent care of me.
And this is another one of those times where it dawns on me that I’m really his wife, that our lives are intimately linked, that we have a deep commitment to one another that runs both ways (I felt this way as well when we bought our new car together this spring, the importance and complexity of that choice really bringing it all into focus). The truth is I’ve always felt rather devoted to Skyspook, ever since our first few dates, and acting in a way that’s loyal to his emotions, his interests, and his life has come naturally since he and I are weirdly compatible, to the point that I nearly overlooked him as a romantic interest because our thought processes and value systems were so similar (i.e., I thought he was boring until I realized he was thinking like me and basically no one thinks like me and therefore he was a weird, too, and the same kind that I was). However, even from the very beginning of our relationship, there were a lot of naysayers who thought this was simply a rebound thing (it probably didn’t help that we were all polyamorous at the time so the normal “guidelines” for healthy intervals between relationships were even more useless than they usually are), and after my divorce, I lost a great deal of confidence in my ability to judge the viability of relationships.
It’s working. It really is. And it would seem that even my incessant worrying can’t muck it up.
For example, I recently wrote about how much it irks me that I don’t really understand Skyspook, at least not the way he understands me. I was wrong. It’s manifesting in countless little ways now that I’m looking for it — like the other night when I knew exactly what he wanted me to make for dinner (since he’s laid up and I’m doing all the shopping and cooking), even though it’s something we only have once or twice a year at the most.
I have the love I always dreamt of as a little girl — one that countless people told me was impossible and unrealistic until I internalized and subscribed to that belief myself.
And it was worth everything I had to go through to get to here.