My feet hurt. Not just hurt, they ache with a deep pain. I feel drained. I work 11 to 12 hour days now. I work these hours and then I have to come to and take care of all the things that he doesn’t. I should have slept, but I scrubbed by bathroom. I did it because frankly, it was gross and I was tired of using a gross bathroom. Now why was it gross? Well because I stopped picking up the slack when he doesn’t do things. When it was his week to clean the bathrooms and he didn’t do it, no biggie right? When my turn rolls around, then I clean it. So I stopped cleaning, if he didn’t do his week, then it’s going to sit there until he does it.
But this tactic has back fired on me. Because now, it all sits there and doesn’t get done. And as the weeks roll by, things unravel further and it gets worse. So I throw myself further into work and try to ignore it until it gets to now.
I arrive here. 1am and looking around realizing what a mess my home and life has become. What am I raising my child to know? Because she can’t understand the concept of why it isn’t being done, all she sees is that it isn’t done. Maybe she doesn’t think it needs to be done. Good god, what have I done.
And then he gets home and says, well the truck is dead. (I’m almost passed out on the couch at this point, having reached true exhaustion after scrubbing the bathroom.) After this announcement, he heads back outside to presumably fix said issue, but what he really is doing is wasting time. He dicks around for two hours doing god knows what and then says, it can’t be jumped I’ll just have to call someone in the morning. Well that doesn’t work for me. I have to work in the morning, Amelia has to go to school. I can just see where this is going. He’ll just end up not going to work, not getting paid, and sure as hall not getting the truck fixed.
So, that leaves it to me. Time for you know who to pick up the slack again and get things in order. I slump outside (still exhausted) and proceed to attach the jumper cables correctly (really people there are directions right on the cables), and the get the fucking truck running. (Having before hand already searched online for a 24 hour auto parts store, because really what was he going to do after he got it running in the first place? Drive around aimlessly hoping to randomly come across a store? the answer to yes)
Of course, while I am waiting for the battery to charge a little, I poke around the engine. Note to reader: I am by no way schooled in automobiles. I can jump a car, and clean my windshield. I know where the battery is and if I look in the manual I can find the fuse box and tell you what each fuse is for. But that is it. Common sense knowledge only. I did notice two months ago that the engine was overheating when I drove it once. (I said something to him about this, and was of course shocked to hear that it had been happening for a while and he didn’t do anything about it. Now that I was aware of it, I assumed that he would get this taken care of. Right? ..right?)… I digress, I am poking around the engine, because I know he didn’t get it looked at and engines don’t magically stop overheating. So I unscrew the cap to the engine coolant and what is there? No coolant. None. in fact, I am surprised that the car is running. We are lucky the engine is running. We are lucky the engine didn’t blow up one morning while he was driving our young child to school.
And this is the conversation:
Me: What the hell? There is no coolant!! Didn’t you get this looked at? Didn’t you think to get the fluids checked?
He has the gall to say, “well I don’t have the knowledge.”
Here is where I loose it.
Me: Do I look like a fucking mechanic? It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that when your engine is over heating, something is wrong and you need to get it looked at.
Him: “Well we don’t have the money.”
If I was mad before, I think I reached nuclear proportions. I was so mad, that I wasn’t yelling. I was just resigned to what I was saying. I was so mad, that it was like ice falling from my mouth.
Me: “You know what, that’s bullshit. That’s worse than bullshit, that’s just being lazy. We need our cars to get to work, and if we need to pay to get work done on them then you and I go without eating if we can’t afford it.
And honestly, We can afford to get an oil change, we can afford to get the fluids filled. But we can’t afford to replace the god damn engine because you fucking drove it into the ground. What the hell are you thinking. WE TECHNICALLY DON’T EVEN OWN THIS TRUCK AND YOU ARE WRECKING IT. You are physically choosing to not do anything and to further damage the truck. You’ve been off for four fucking days, and you are telling me it didn’t even cross your mind to do one single thing about this? Or any of your other three day weekends for that matter? You don’t even know how much money is in your bank account so how do you know we don’t have the money?
You are being lazy and irresponsible and I can’t do this anymore. I don’t understand why it has to get to a point where things are in crisis and then I have to step in to fix it. You are a liability to me, just one more think that I have to clean up after. and I don’t want to do that anymore. I get this shit at work, I don’t want to have to deal with it at home to. You are supposed to build me up and support me, not break me down.”
And he just takes this. He just looks a me and agrees. But he always agrees. He always tap dances around says the right words.
Him: Oh, I’ll be better, I’ll be more (insert adjectives used to describe a good spouse). I will change.
Here is my message to you. They never change. I’ve been waiting 7 long years for things to change and all I got was a dirty bathroom that I had to clean after a 12 hour work day.
