After my Friday night alone, I really started considering how much I do in my daily life that just doesn't please me. I do things to please everyone in my family but when I really reflected, they are not necessarily my preference.
The first thing is my eating. I cook things that my family likes, mainly my husband. He is the pickiest eater I have ever met. I admit to being finicky when I was growing up but once I matured and realized a taste of something that I didn't think I liked wasn't going to kill me, I would try anything. This philosophy has really opened my palate up to some amazing foods. My husband is stubborn, plain and simple. He does NOT like it. Even though he has never tried (even licked) 80% of what he claims not to like, he doesn't like it. This really limits meal times. He does not eat cheese, creamy things (dressings, casseroles, etc.), anything that meat is mixed into (stews, beef stroganoff, things like that), anything made with milk or gravy-type consistencies, the list goes on and on.
When I first married him, I thought that was just him, AT THAT TIME. I didn't even know that people at 22 were done evolving. At 21 I hadn't tried a whole lot of things and by no means did I think, "Well, that's that, I'm never going to know what that tastes like." I assumed he would try things as I cooked them and gradually his repertoire would grow and we could eat a variety of dinners. Nope. Never happened. He tells me all of the time to cook what I want and he will fend for himself. I can't do it.
He works all day and as a homemaker, I just feel part of my 'job' is to have dinner ready for him. I mean, after all, even when the kids were little, they were not sooo consuming that I could not throw together dinner. It wasn't always a gourmet feast, but there was a meal on the table. I just found myself making the things I knew he would eat. It seemed a lot simpler than getting angry when he tried something new I'd made and he claimed not to like it. I would be upset. I spent all of this time making something and he never liked it. The problem? We eat the same things (or variations of the same things) over and over.
My husband would eat pasta every night. He could care less if he ever saw any type of meat again. I don't want to eat carbs every night. As we are getting older, I'm trying to eat all of my carbs early in the day and stick to protein and veggies for dinner. That is his nightmare. Unless it's salad with chicken on it, he is not interested. So, as always, I end up giving in. I make things I know he will eat and suck it up. I'm certainly not going to make one meal for my family and a separate one for myself. I don't like to cook that much.
I also walk around my house and think it does not reflect me at all. If I lived alone, I would have my house COMPLETELY different. I always take into consideration what makes everyone else comfortable. My living room should be a formal living room and set up as such. It's more like a family room. Practical, yes. Pretty, no. I would opt for pretty every time if given the choice.
Even the patio which is stressing me out so much is already a problem. I want to border it with small stones or something. It needs to be balanced. I told my husband that yesterday and he started coming up with 100 reasons why I shouldn't do that. Why? I'm doing it. I will dig the dirt and place the rocks and do the whole thing and then maintain it afterward. I told him that right now it looks like concrete blocks just plunked in our yard. He kept saying, "Well, YOU wanted it." I acknowledged that and then said I wanted to make it aesthetically pleasing. He just kept saying, "this is what YOU wanted." Ugh.
It makes me wonder. How much of this craziness is 'me' coming to the surface? How much is Kiraly just trying to have a voice in her world? I have been shoving her down and shutting her up for so long. I wonder if my unhappiness is caused by deep repression. The kind of repression that happens when you give up all of you in the mistaken attempt to please everyone around you. When you give up your identity, you are unhappy and ultimately everyone around you is unhappy. It can't work. It can't last. Eventually, some part of you must be acknowledged or insanity will ensue.
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