Unconditional Love

In about a half an hour I am visiting my therapist again, for the first time in about two and half months. The last time I went, we decided it was time for J to come back in and we could start doing couples work again. I told J it was up to him to make the appointment, since his schedule is less flexible than mine, and he never did. Finally, after our weekend with our friends, I decided it was time again.

I've been feeling depressed and a little hopeless about marriage, motherhood, my life in general, coupled with my usual anxiety attacks. I often feel that I'm just a person who cannot be happy. I know I was happy once, when I was a little kid and in high school and college for awhile, but since then, not very often. I am confused about what to do with our marriage. I think J. is clinically depressed but after one trial last summer of an antidepressant which resulted in the oft-mentioned sexual side effects, he just stopped taking it and hasn't done anything since. So there are days when I think he is completely unfair to me, completely unloving and unkind and possibly even malicious. But then there are days when he makes me laugh, when he does something nice or looks sweet playing with Bubba, and I feel that love I used to feel so much more often.

Today on the bus I was thinking about this and realized that I am loving J. conditionally, only when I feel like he deserves it. I think he is doing the same to me, but still--that's not really what a marriage should be. I wonder if marriage is supposed to be unconditional love, or is that just reserved for our children? How does one build a relationship that is unconditional? I wonder if it's even possible. I don't think I can just keep pouring love into someone who doesn't return it. Yet, on days like today, I feel I should work harder to love him unconditionally, to give him some stability to count on, to help him feel not so alone in this world.

But then there are those other days, when he's just downright mean to me, that I can't stand him and think divorce is the only answer. So back to therapy I go, even if it's just me, by myself, instead of the two of us.

Other excitement for the week will be on Friday, when we take Bubba to the doctor to find out about his left leg. When he was a little less than a year old, we had him in physical therapy because he wouldn't crawl, and then when he did, he often dragged one leg behind him. Then it took some time for him to learn how to pull up on furniture and cruise, but he's been doing it for several months now. The problem now is that he is 17 months old, is not yet walking, and most concerning is the fact that while both of his legs turn out, his left one turns out much more dramatically than his right. This concerns me since he's already had trouble with his legs. I want to find out what is causing this, because in the back of my mind I worry about brain damage and cerebral palsy because he was born six weeks early and he did have to have oxygen those first 24 hours of his life and what if he didn't get enough, etc. Hopefully we'll start on the road to some answers on Friday.