Real Love Stories: Nice Eyebrows, Part II
Uncategorized 2 Comments »Written by Rhian Cooksey Quinton
We had been married for less than a year when my youngest brother died. We were two weeks away from moving to another area of our country. Another country entirely if we want to be specific. We had no jobs lined up. My University course was starting 5 months away, and nothing in our current rental had been packed up yet.
In my case, less than a year’s worth of marriage was enough time to realize that person you had married could actually be quite annoying. In fact, more than annoying. They could be infuriating. You were passionately in love, yet there were those little voices stomping around in your head, prodding you with their imaginary fingers, and chanting, “He can’t really love you very well if he does that. He can’t really know you very well if he does that.”
I had a pre-conceived notion that the person I would eventually fall in love with would immediately know that more than anything in the world I love to be bought books. It felt a little long, almost a year in, not to have been gifted any books, and I was growing increasingly impatient.
I am quite convinced that these questions and expectations are quite normal. I am also quite convinced that these questions were not created by imaginary pixies running amok, but more my own subconscious. A subconscious fueled by Hollywood and too many years worth of fairy tales. More certain than anything, am I convinced that they would be easily dealt with, and worked through, under ‘normal’ circumstances. However, my 17-year-old brother dieing, two weeks before we were due to relocate home and country, were no t the most ‘normal’ of circumstances.
In that place of grief and overwhelming brokenness, it became very clear that my somewhat newly acquired husband did not really know me at all.
My idea of him as ultimate awkward “Geekboy”, being so observant and sensitive that he would know what I needed to hear, and when, was soon dashed. In reality, I begun to believe he didn’t really know me at all.
And worse still, he was anything but sensitive to my all-encompassing pain.
The memory of him stopping for a Burger King when I was in such a rush to get home, became just one example of how little he understood my pain. In my mind I began to realize that this is how it had been all along. Before my brother had even died, he hadn’t realized even then what would and wouldn’t be helpful for me.
As the months went on, we became just two people who happened to be sharing a flat. Two people who truly wanted the best for each other, but who seemed to be incapable of knowing what that was, or how to provide it.
Five years later I can look back with vague memories and wonder how on earth we got through.
How he could be expected to know my innermost self, when I had become a shattered version of it?
How I could be expected to want to fight for our fledgling relationship, when I was fighting so hard to wake up in the morning?
How really, all I ever wanted was for him to know me. To know, like he had somehow seemed to know in the car on that first date, that my eyebrows were one of my most vulnerable parts. And to compliment them.
My disappointment towards realizing the man I had married was anything but the sensitive pioneer I had believed he was, manifested in anger. Every little thing that went wrong I became furious about, whether it had anything to do with him or not, it was instantly his fault.
We sought counseling, we had time apart, and I had anger therapy, all the while wondering if what I was fighting for was really worth it.
I read a book soon after my brother died that said, ‘When you no longer know what to do, just do what you know.’
I knew that I had made a commitment to this man, a man that had changed before my very eyes, but a commitment none the less. And maybe, when we were able to finally able to move all the mess out the way, there would be something still there that had been worth fighting for. Something beautiful and vulnerable.
So we fought. He fought. I fought. We continue to fight. We continue to fight, and believe, that we can know each other.
He is patient. And he learns my new ways. The ways he had only touched upon in that first year were scrambled, and he had to figure out how to learn this new version of me.
He is strong. And he fights on the days when I have no fight left in me. When my energy is taken up with getting up. Brushing my teeth. Showering.
I am less patient. But I too learn my new ways. I practice my skills acquired in therapy of realizing, although it may be my instinct to blame my husband for everything, it is not always his fault.
Together we are learning how to be married.
I am realizing that the wide, empty, unlit road we sped down that first night is a lot like marriage. There will be darkness. There will be glimpses. There will be unexpected twists and turns. And just as there is no one else on the road, there will be no one else like you, for each marriage is unique an individual.
I still fight to feel secure and safe.
Only now I help him along with an Amazon wish list or two. And am unspeakably content when he comes home with random books.
taken from
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