Bandwagon

I fell off the bandwagon. Quite a while ago, in fact; as it rounded a curve in the road, I just slid right off the tailgate and landed with a soft thump in the dust. Ever since, I've been sitting on the side of the road, eating the most delicious moist velvety chocolate cake with melt-in-your-mouth icing, while the strains of the band grow ever fainter in the distance. I can still glimpse the sunlight glinting off the saxophones and horn section when the wagon tops the occasional rise. I don't think they've even noticed I'm gone.

While I eat my cake, I've been mulling a few questions, including
- Should I try again, and see if I can be sugar-free for the month of August?
- Why is my willpower so damn weak, anyway? It shouldn't really be that hard to give up sweets. Millions, probably billions of people in the world live without sugar in their diets. But for me it seems to be this huge unconquerable mountain - I count the days, obsessing over what I'm not allowed to have and how much longer I have to do without it.
- That fact makes me feel like a terrible greedy slug. I ought to have my mind on higher things.
- For the first two weeks of July, I thought I might be pregnant, so it was easier to be pure. Then I found out in mid-July that I wasn't, and I was so disappointed, I binged on sugar just to try to stop crying.
- My husband isn't addicted to sugar. Giving up sugar for a month would be easy for him. He probably doesn't even realize that there are two Klondike bars in the right-hand side of the freezer, that have been there for a month, that are so prominent in my imagination it's like they're burning a laser hole through the freezer door and flashes of disco light are escaping into the kitchen from the party that they're having in there, and he walks right past the fridge like he doesn't even see it.
- My husband also doesn't particularly want a second child. Or increased family togetherness like I'm always trying to get us to have. Or better conversations. Or more emotional closeness. Or more travel to interesting places. Or more friends.
- What the hell does my husband want, anyway?
- Is this just how our lives and our marriage are going to be from now on? me always putting on a brave face and acting cheerful and trying to keep things lively, while he exudes inertia and spends the weekend in his computer chair if at all possible? Do other couples have to try this hard to find things to do together and to have fun together, or does it just happen naturally for them? I'm so grateful that we don't fight, that dinnertime is harmonious, that we are nice to each other. And underlying that, I'm so grateful to be married at all. But is that as good as it gets?
- Why doesn't he read my blog, anyway? He knows the URL. I was a little nervous about giving it to him, initially, because I thought that if he read it I'd censor my thoughts. Then I realized he never did, and was able to relax. Then I felt wistful, and wished he would, because if nothing else it's a good way to project, in a passive-aggressive way.
- If he had a blog, I'd check that thing every day, I'm that interested in getting a window into his thoughts. When we have nonconversations in which I come up with four or five things to say and he just doesn't answer at all, not even a grunt to show that he heard me, what is going on in his head? Is he lost in his own thoughts? Thinking about something completely different? Mulling over what I said? Not at all interested in what I said? How can you just not say anything when someone is talking to you?
- Being happy is something that you have to work at. I know that. And I never want to be one of those people who makes someone else responsible for their happiness, and who then gleefully blames them for failing. I've been on the receiving end of that and it's an awful thing to do to someone. So I do take responsibility for my own happiness. The day that I found out I wasn't pregnant, all I wanted to do was weep and lie around and be comforted, but I didn't even call a single friend, or ask anything of my husband. I came up with a plan that would get me up and out of the house all day with my child, to keep both of us occupied, and I pushed all the misery down inside. But. It would have been nice if he had noticed. Either the sadness or the way I dealt with it.

See, this is why freewriting can be so revealing. I started here thinking I wanted to write about my weakness for sugar, and I ended up talking about my relationship. I have probably written more than I should share. If he ever did read my blog, I know he'd be uncomfortable that I'm writing in this vein. But he doesn't, so he'll never know.