The Structural Integrity

He wakes to the morning sun squeezing its way through the blinds. The light doesn’t fill him with happiness nor dread. It doesn’t make him feel at all. He knows that if a doctor were to call him and tell him he was terminally ill, the sun would look different. The day would feel different. Life, he thinks, would push its way through the mundane like a 3-D puzzle. He’d look at life through a lens of appreciation and wonder and awe. He would look at it the way he looked at the Christmas tree surrounded by a mountain of presents, when he was a kid. He’d believe in magic. Because he’d know it was dissipating.

And he hates that he can’t feel that way now. It shouldn’t take a slow dance with death to appreciate the music of life. But it does. Christ, it does.

His wife stands in front of him, momentarily shirtless as she changes from her pajamas to her work clothes. Her eyes are still puffed and red from another verbal bout the evening before. A fight that now in the morning, as she tries desperately to avoid eye contact with him, seems beyond ridiculous. A fight about nonsense. But a fight nonetheless. And the more they had, the more the structural integrity of their marriage weakened.

Last night’s fight had been the first one where she said, “I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

And in an instant, he wanted to take back everything negative he ever said to her. He wanted to grab her, and hold her. He wanted to love her. And touch her. Taste her. He wanted to cry with her. And watch a movie with her. Laugh with her. Eat with her. Drink with her. He wanted to do anything but fight with her.

And they had children. Two beautiful children. Two beautiful, shit-disturbing children, that in the moment of their fight, he both loves and loathes them. He both blames them for his happiness, and blames them for the cracking of his marital dam.

The fight went back and forth for an indeterminate amount of time. Again, he ranted and raved. Talked without meaning. Spoke without words. She looked at him, anger and sadness, sickness and regret, all visible in her blue eyes.

He realized that the argument was about life. And what it does to people. What it does to new and exciting love. And how many empty promises they told themselves and each other, about how they would be years down the road.

But of course, it's a lie. It’s a lie that doesn’t appear all at once, rather in tiny pieces until it forms the full picture. The full truth.

She turns on her “nothings wrong with mommy” voice, as she goes to wake the kids in their rooms.

Another day of silence between them.

More weakening of the integrity.

A deep breath. Another long day.

And so it begins.