No Crystal Ball

Sometimes Lion can see the future. Well, not exactly, but he gets a feeling that something is wrong. At times he can be very specific. Other times it’s just a vague something-isn’t-right feeling. I tell him if he sees something wrong with me I don’t want to know about it. It’s kind of creepy.

I can’t see the future. I don’t know how his surgery and subsequent recovery will affect us. I just know that all his doom and gloom of my leaving him won’t happen. I may want to clock him with a frying pan a few times, but I won’t really do it. He may want to yell at me for making him do his physical therapy that hurts, but he won’t. I’m not delusional enough to believe things will always be rosy and sweet. We will be trapped together for over a week with very little outside contact. He gets cabin fever on a weekend. What will he do over the course of a week?

The one thing I do know is that we will get through it. We’ve gotten through unemployment and financial uncertainty. We’ve gotten through a cross-country move. We’re coming up on our twelfth wedding anniversary in August, and our fifteenth year of being together. We haven’t killed each other yet. If anything, with domestic discipline and female led marriage, we have ways of dealing with things that other, non-practicing couples don’t have.

I know we’ll get on each other’s nerves. There’s no way to avoid that. But I have the power to let Lion know he’s being a toddler or treating me badly. I could do that without DD and FLM, but I never really did. I just absorbed all that negativity and didn’t stick up for myself. I’m learning how to stick up for myself now. Maybe I haven’t developed “the look” yet, but I’m more likely to tell Lion when he’s near or across the line.

Lion may not be aware of his actions because he’ll be drugged and in pain and I know he won’t be a toddler on purpose. He’ll just need some gentle, and perhaps not-so-gentle guidance, from time to time. I’m sure I can use what we’ve learned over these past three years to help get us through his recovery.