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In the 1963 version of Cleopatra, Elizabeth Taylor says to her lover Richard Burton/Marc Antony, “There are never enough hours in the days of a queen, and her nights have too many.”  I feel the same way, as one who cannot sleep when scheduled.

It’s 7:30 in the morning in Columbus, Ohio. Black trees silhouette a light blue sky. In Bowling Green, it must be near full daylight by now. As a night creature, this feels more correct to me: night lingering, refusing to give up to light. Maybe all insomniacs feel that way: night shouldn’t end so soon for the world because it doesn’t for us.

Not that I haven’t slept. But for the past hour or so I’ve sat in front of the fireplace, attempting to build and maintain a fire. There’s something meditative and magical about it … and damned challenging. I’m not sure if I ever succeeded, except in fits and starts. I kept thinking of ironic quotes from Jack London’s “To Build a Fire“, wondering at my own ineptitude even with a kerosene lighter. “To Build a Fire” is a brutal story, like every piece of London’s I’ve read. It brings the luxuries around you into glaring, guilty, happy focus.

Marriage feels like this sometimes.

I’m partially awake because my husband performed a 2 foot leap with a full 360-degree twist in bed … launched straight up from the mattress, no less. He accuses me of doing the same thing constantly and we’ve been at each other’s throats over sleeping arrangements for the past week and a half, so I’m not sure if this was deliberate or not. I’m hoping not. I have to have faith in him that it’s not deliberate.

All the arguments in Ohio have been centered around the space heater I’ve been keeping on next to my side of the bed. It’s the strange bright red fan type. Combined with a portable cool steam humidifier, it’s been helping me get over a severe sinus infection. But the light and heat keep Mike awake, so we’re stuck. We don’t even fight over money any more: just sleep. We’re diametrically opposed.

I don’t know what to do. The sinus pressure headaches have been so intense that last night I resolved to shoot over to Urgent Care today and beg for a Cortisone shot. The Columbus acupuncture clinic is full up between the holiday weekends and it’s too soon after  my most recent course of Prednisone and Azithromycin for anything else. My daily treatments of steaming-hot baths, facial compresses, neti pot cleanses, and OTC decongestants only take the edge off. Thank you again, nonallergic rhinitis.

By some miracle, however, the sinus headache (verging on migraine strength) broke around 2am this morning. Honestly I think it was the hour of low-key kundalini yoga I performed in front of the fire. My father built it for me before he went to bed. I base those work-outs off of my Raviana AM/PM Yoga DVD. I may also get some of it from their Yoga Quick Fixes Insomnia segment. After that I slept for four hours, thank god.

Now I hope to sleep for three more before my noontime meet-up with my mother.This is only my second year with divorced parents, and splitting time between them over the holidays doesn’t help with stress. Lucky I have most of January off to recover.

I’ve found a Yoga for Insomnia segment on YouTube that I’ve inserted above, but I haven’t tried it yet.

Every morning lately, I haven’t known what to expect from my husband when he wakes up. It’s unnerving. Overall I’m not worried about our married. This is “just” a rough patch. They’re as natural as the weather, though just as scary and dangerous. Not something to be ignored, but not something to freak out over. Not something to go run for a divorce for …

However, I do believe that if you’ve married the wrong person, a divorce is the best solution for everyone (especially kids). I wish my parents had divorced 20 years ago, but that doesn’t diminish my belief in marriage as a relationship between two people. Any two people of consenting ago who know each other well enough to make a lasting commitment, and not necessarily a legal one. But, again, that’s another post.

So many couples go in to marriage with these expectations of something close to perfection without realizing that love is as a fire. Just because it doesn’t kindle instantly doesn’t mean it won’t last, and vice versa. Love needs constant tending. Love can go cold or too hot. Sometimes it needs more fuel, sometimes a little water.

I believe that if you build your love-fire-marriage on a solid foundation (friendship, trust, balance, dry wood …) then it can almost alway be brought back to life for as long as you have hands to tend it. Hands that want to tend it that is. But unlike a fire, you need two sets of hands. One set won’t cut it.

We rewatched Enchanted the night before we left New York for Ohio. It had been too long, for this is a five star movie and one of our mutual favorites. It’s an incredible film on so many levels (my film PhD husband could write a paper on this so I won’t try here), but for me the most important part is its messages about the love-relationship. A lot of it comes down to the following:

Robert: Marriages are a success if they manage not to end. Forget about happiness.

Giselle: What about you and Nancy? You know that you will live happily ever after.

Robert: I don’t know if I’ll make it through today, let alone a lifetime. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s complicated.

Giselle: But it doesn’t have to be. Not if she knows.

Robert: Knows what?

Giselle: How much you really love her.

Robert: Of course she does. We just don’t talk about it every minute
of the day, but she knows.

Giselle: How?

Robert: What do you mean, “how?”

Giselle: How does she know you love her?

It’s so easy to get caught up in day-to-day trials (both external and internal) and forget to worship your relationship. That’s how relationships die.

I saw a billboard in, maybe, Minneapolis a couple of years ago. I wish I had a photo of it. It showed a man thinking, and the simple line of text “What have you done for your marriage today?”. The man could/should just have easily been a woman, but we won’t go into the gender politics of marriage here. I wonder if our culture does indeed encourage women to be more attentive to marriage than men, but like I said … I’ll leave that to you to think about and to the sociologists and other professors to debate and attempt to prove.

So for all the flaws I see in my husband, I must remember that I at least equal them. Dealing with a sick wife while writing your dissertation away from your home university with only a small, under-stocked library in rural Kentucky must be Hell. Whether it’s a Hell equal to, worse or less than being the sick wife who fights so hard to become healthy is a moot question. We both fight our battles. We must “simply” fight them less with each other and more for each other.

My Fire at Dad's House (while it lasted)