The strong silent type

I never thought of it like this until I walked a mile in his shoes. Over the years as our family has grown and our expenses have increased my husband always worked however much we needed him to to make ends meet.  A few years ago I went back to work so he was able to take more time off to spend with us. It was a hard adjustment for me, and there were a few instances where in frustration I would say "I can't do this" and he would always listen to my feelings, he always made it clear to me how much he appreciated all of my hard work and if it was what I needed then we would go back to the way things were, I admit I would kick the idea around, a lot, but I knew this was best for my family so I keep working.

Last year we got some horrible news about his health, the years of hard work and ignoring his body's warning signs had finally caught up to him. He just physically could not push himself like that anymore, at least not until he got his health back in order. This put things in a whole new light for me, and our family dynamic shifted.

I never do anything half heartily so when I went back to work I went back in full gear. I had already had a part time seasonal job, which I kept, but I also got a full time job using by education and training, at the same time I went to school online to earn my certificate for bookkeeping, I wanted my own business. I have been doing that for a while now, and my devotion to my family will always come first, so I will never let work take away from what I do for them, so in the end I take away from things for myself, like sleep and eating properly. My clientele has grown to a place where I let my part time job go this past February, but I still have my full time day job, so I do my other work on evenings and weekends, often from my laptop as the rest of my house sleeps.

These past few weeks have really taken their toll on me both mentally and physically, I have been putting in 12-14 hour days of work, then evenings are filled with our extra curricular activities, this usually means going in around 4:00 in the morning and getting off work between 5-6pm heading straight home to pick up everyone and head out to what ever event we have to attend weather it be little league practice or a game, PTA, Board meetings, or fundraisers, after all that is what I did when I was a stay at home mom, why should working change that?

I have been so exhausted I have not gone to the gym for almost 2 weeks, I have so much to take care of I fix dinner and while they are all sitting at the table eating I will rush to put a load of laundry in or load the dish washer. The other night I was sitting on the edge of my bed kind of "zoning out" and my husband asked if I was ok, and I said I was fine, but he asked again, and I snapped "I'm fine". Being the sweetie he is, he sat so close to me on the bed he was leaning up against me and he just starred, I looked away and he just stayed there, finally after feeling his eyes on the side of my head for a few minutes I looked at him and said "what are you doing" and he said "I am here waiting to listen" so I started to tell him all that I have been feeling lately and he sat there and rubbed my shoulders, never saying a word except "We all really appreciate what you are doing for us".

I felt awful complaining to him about being tired after he had done it for so long. He never even brought up the fact that he did it, he just listened. Thinking back he would never complain about working so much or missing out on so much, the few times he did complain about anything was if he got so sick he would actually miss work he would say something along the lines of "I feel crummy" or "I am so tired". He never got upset if I was too busy with taking care of the kids that the house work waited a day or laundry piled up. I finally asked him why he never complained and he said "I didn't want you to  think I didn't want to provide for my family" so I asked "do you think I don't want to provide for my family because I am complaining?" and he said "no, honey, you are strong but you are just not the strong silent type".