I proposed in my hospital room. Which, in retrospect, was probably not the wisest move I’ve ever made. I mean, yes, I wanted T to know how much I loved her, but talk about emotional baggage! Geez.

I can’t remember know, ten years later, if I had gotten the diagnosis which gave me a great chance of beating the cancer … or if I was still in the dark and pretty sure my number was up. At any rate, T said yes.

She also said she’d get the house all cleaned up. That she’d take care of me through the chemo we assumed would incapacitate me.

When I returned home from my hospital stay, the house was still a disaster; things were still everywhere; nothing had been cleaned.

Ten years later I still hear her utter words like “I’ll take care of the laundry” only to cringe, knowing that her idea of taking care of it means sometime before the apocalypse.

Since I was a young child, I’ve often worked through discomfort or outright pain.  Certain things simply need to get done. You can’t not feed the animals just because you stubbed your toe (that’s an exaggeration). But really, if you have to get to work and there’s 3 feet of snow behind your car, you can’t put down the shovel because your back is tired. Things need to get done.

I assumed when T said she’d clean the house and take care of me during my cancer, that she would do so. I was not just disappointed, but very hurt to discover nothing had changed when I got home. That she was embarrassed and apologetic, but claimed “she didn’t have time.”

Ten years later, nothing has changed and I realize now that I shouldn’t ever have expected it to. Instead of wanting to do more, she’s been spending 10 years trying to get me to do less. And like a fool, I tried to please her. Now trying to break out of my ridiculous lethargy and inertia is a process that I would never have believed could be so difficult.

Ten years later, I feel like a heel because instead of taking care of me when I was sick, it turns out she’s pretty much chronically ill and I’m tired of feeling like I’m the one who does everything. I’m not as sympathetic as I should be to someone who is ill or hurt or not feeling well because I don’t know how to cope with someone who is ALWAYS ill or hurt or not feeling well. She was supposed to take care of me, not the other way around. (I told you I felt like a heel at the beginning of this paragraph.)

I’ve said change or leave a couple of times now … but there’s always another legitimate medical excuse which restricts her abilities yet again. I’m not going to leave because she’s ill or hurt. That’s certainly not fair.

But I’m tired of feeling alone when it comes to chores … but painfully compromising nearly everything I love because I live with someone else.

And I’m tired of loving someone … and wanting to smack the laziness and inertia out of her at the same time.