“Would you love me if I was a worm?”
A question posed to my husband over a shared strawberry cone of vanilla soft serve after a manic shopping episode for treats at Stew Leonard’s.
“No.”
“No! What do you mean no?”
“Why would I love you? You’d be a worm.”
“So, your love is conditional?”
“Yes, conditional upon you being human.”
The thing I am learning about marriage is that it’s not romantic.
But there are moments.
Like when we imagine, out loud, the cottage we’d build in Newport off Ocean Drive overlooking the Atlantic. Or, in Aruba, sitting conspiratorially over a piece of chocolate lava cake, basking in the peace and happiness of our life together.
Mostly, it’s “look at this blister on my toe” (him) and “can you see my heart beating out of my neck?” (Me) It’s a dinner I make, eaten on the couch, side by side, while watching some franchise of 90 Day Fiancé, followed by an orange Hostess cupcake for dessert and bed by 8:30pm.
It’s a life I like.
However, it’s taken a while to feel comfortable being myself, fully and truly, while living beside someone else with their interests and eccentricities and needs. Growing up, I stuck to my bedroom rarely escaping unless the coast was clear of anyone who would stop to engage me in conversation. I didn’t want the judgement. And then when I moved into my apartment, I spent seven years living in luxurious freedom. My mantra being “you’re safe when you’re alone.”
And in those years that comprised my 20’s, I became an observer, a journalist to my own life, dating men who I allowed to become the center.
Do I like punk shows? Hockey games? Hiking up mountains in winter? Jumping out of planes?
While all of it was exciting and fun, I wasn’t the genesis of these ideas and events. But I was more than happy to go along for the ride.
Then, it’s no surprise that when I’d wake up alone in my apartment, confronted with a day to myself, I didn’t know how to answer the question, “what’s going to make me happy today?” I was too busy trying to adopt someone else’s definition of happy. Trying to impress whoever I was dating into thinking I wasn’t boring. Because once upon a time, a person very close to me told me I was, and I fought to be anything but that.
Except, I like to read. A lot. And I like quiet. I like to spend whole days writing. And I like early nights and early mornings.
And you know who doesn’t mind? That guy I married.
He’ll come downstairs, during a break from work, and wrap his arms around me. “Do you know how proud I am of you for chasing your dreams?” And I feel so lucky to have gotten it right for once. To feel like there is space for me here to be my whole self entirely without apology.
So, back to Stew Leonard’s and the shared ice cream cone and the question of whether or not my husband would love me as a worm.
“I wouldn’t, no.”
“But where would I live?”
“Obviously here. I’d build you a terrarium.”
“But you just said you wouldn’t love me.”
“I never said you wouldn’t live with me.”
Sounds like unconditional love to me. The boring marathon of a long, happy life together.
Robyn Neilsen 