I love you straight from my brain

To know my husband is to love him. And after a year of intense trauma therapy, I know him so much more, and so I love him so much more. And not love as in sex, or love as in losing myself in him, but love as in "I want you to thrive!" The best kind of love.

His severe ADHD diagnosis was the most revealing. What I thought was male distraction, Dutch coldness, and workaholism was neurodivergence! They are still those things, but now I know! Therapy is a transformative gift, and I recommend it for every married couple out there. Whether everything is copacetic or not, learn about each other and how your brains work. Loving your brain is loving yourself. Loving yourself means you can love others fully.

Our marriage is filled with contradictions and obstacles. Coming from different worlds, the path was destined to be difficult, but what is magical is our persistence, our grit, our fierce determination to win at all costs. Our definition of "win" changes, as it should. No relationship ever stays the same. I am sorry if yours has not changed, and I would recommend doing something radical and dramatic to shake it up. Or guilelessly enter a community where it can be done for you. Either way. 

So, a very happy (and hard-earned) 23rd anniversary to us (yesterday). Neither divorce nor death has come for us yet, though a few times they have knocked. And not just knocked but camped out at our door, testing the locks on windows. Anyone married for 23 years has felt the same, so don't go fixating on what that means. No exegesis required here, please. 

We keep living to die (or divorce) another day, and the trauma turned out to be a gift. And not just the public trauma, but the private ones. The traumas we carried all our lives, and the ones we did not know about. I see them all and recognize them as part of me. That is a gift I give myself. Much like climbing Everest, it is a gift: grueling, uncomfortable, and nauseating, but the summit is deeply satisfying, and the view is even better.  The pinnacle is worth it emotionally,  but practically, it prepares you for the descent. 

Because you must descend. No one lives forever on the apex. You always come down from that point, and if curious and mindful, you see things differently: the other side of ADHD is creativity, innovation, the ability to multi-task, energy, and drive. Like the neurologist who studied my husband said, "The fact that you have accomplished so much is extraordinary. I have never seen someone with your level of distractibility achieve so much." The other side of trauma is humility, clarity, compassion: strengths that can turn into power.

Wiebe is not thrilled that I am sharing this. "It's too personal," he says. But he knows nothing will stop me if I have a story to tell. I will tell you why at another time. His only comment was that to many people, 23 years is not a milestone, it's blah, not sexy. And yet, he reminds me— his sports fanatic brain kicking into gear— Michael Jordan, LeBron James, and David Beckham were all number 23. In many ways, 23 is the number of success. I could only smile and honestly say, "I do like how your brain works."