My hubby, as you may know from reading my blog, has been noticeably unhappy for the past while. I knew he was tired and that it seemed like he felt trapped or burdened, festering beyond mere fatigue. I thought he really needed a break.

Then his vacation finally came, and I was so glad to see him go off for some much-needed down time with friends he loves in a place away from home. I was secretly a little worried that he’d come back having realized that he was truly unsatisfied, or that he actually hated something… I figured that for him to be so unhappy he either hated his life in general or – God forbid – me in particular.

He came back Monday, and he had realized he was unhappy, and it was because he hated something.

It turns out he’s decided that he hates living in Iowa.

“What about Iowa do you hate in particular?” I asked.

He went off on the reasons that people have for wanting to leave Fairfield: he’s sick to death of working for and with flakey meditators. He’s sick of the weather. He’s sick of living where you never want to do anything. He’s sick of not having anything to do, other than get drunk or watch other people get drunk. He’s sick of being surrounded by fat people. {He said it, not me!} He’s sick of the restaurants, he’s sick of the boredom, he’s sick of —

Since we’ve all heard the “I gotta get the fuck outta Fairfield” litany, I won’t repeat all of Brett’s version here. I’m sure you get the general idea.

I’ve seen the “I hate Iowa” syndrome many times before, and we all know you can’t talk someone out of it; when they’ve got it, they’ve got it. So I didn’t even bother to launch into the ‘you-should-count-your-blessings’ speech, because I have a hard time counting my own sometimes. Sure, we’ve got each other and the house and the land and our jobs… and debt, an endless remodel, and only four weeks a year to enjoy our twenty-seven acres because of the damn weather here….

There are two sides to each and every coin. So sometimes blessings counting isn’t enough. Besides, I would much rather have him hate Iowa than me.

…
I said, “So you want to move, is that what you’re saying?”

He nodded, eyes on me for my reaction. After all, the house, the property, we’ve invested in our lives here–!

And I said, “I’m not terribly surprised,” and his eyebrows went up. She’s not against it?

“I have to say,” I said, “I figured you’d either come home and say you wanted to move away… Or you’d call and say you weren’t coming home at all.”

I must have made one of those sad faces, because he laughed. “Aw, I wouldn’t do that, Mushlette.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” I replied, grinning back. “I’m not calling you a deserter or anything! But the way things have been with you lately, I figured you either hated your life or you hated me.”

“Well,” he said, serious. “I wasn’t sure which myself.”

I gawked. “No shit?”

“Not really.” He squeezed my foot and smiled.

Whoa! Things were worse for him than I’d expected. I knew things were rough because it had begun to show, but I hadn’t realized they were that rough. I’ve felt like that, and it sucks. We both love our marriage. Fearing for it is enough to knock the sea legs out from under the strongest of people.

…
In the course of our conversation he told me he didn’t think I wanted to be a housewife.

I asked what made him think that and he said, “Because you don’t care about it.”

Observe how weird I’ve become:

I immediately felt an indignant anger and a desire to start telling him about some of his own faults–

–and then I realized he wasn’t being a dick. He was just stating an observation, as people do. He was saying that he knew I’m not particularly fulfilled or satisfied right now either.

And he’s right.

…
I indulge in fantasies sometimes. I don’t mean the sexy ones – I mean private little fantasies that involve, of all the stupid things, moving.

In them I never really bother to define where we’re moving to; it’s just a fantasy about moving. To a new house. A change. Something fresh, different. Something tangible to do.

Something other than this eternal remodel, something other than the eternal list of things we need to do before we can do the things that depend on them. Something other than the low-level guilt of not doing things we could be doing to start ourselves toward the next step and the step after that and the step after that.

But isn’t this what happens? You grow up, you take on responsibilities. It’s natural. Things take time and money, that’s just how it works. I’m just bored, that’s all. Tired of living in the basement and cleaning up after it floods. I should count my blessings, that’s what – this is such a great place! I remember how much we wanted it, how hard we worked to get it, how happy we were when we did. Need to suck it up, that’s all.

Like I said, just a fantasy. Nothing I’d ever even mention, really. I don’t really want to move. We wanted this place so much when we got it. We can’t even see our neighbors.

…
But a happy housewife I’m not. All I really want a decent house I don’t have to fuck with much. That’s as far as my domestic thoughts run.

I’m neat and tidy by nature, but I’m not at all passionate about decorating, gardening, canning, sewing, collecting, displaying, or any of those other homemaker-y types of activities. My idea of hard labor is doing the dishes. I clean the shower when I’m no longer willing to get into it naked.

I want a dishwasher, clothes cleaning appliances that work, and a garbage disposal. I want finished floors and walls so it’s actually worthwhile to sweep. I want cupboards with doors on them, to keep out the dust. I want to be able to put food in my pantry and not have it ruined by mice. I’d like to have a bathroom with a ceiling in it, to cut down on the cobwebs.

Basically, I want a space that’s easy to keep clean. That’s my criteria. I don’t really care about paint, or curtains, or knick-knacks, or throw pillows. My idea of ‘decorating’ is a new couch or $30 spent at Target on throw rugs.

A beautiful house, to me, is a sparse, airy place with high ceilings, good light, shelving stuffed with interesting reading, and a few overstuffed items to sink one’s ass into. Since I’m nowhere near the proper tax bracket for a house like that, I arrange the hand-me-downs we’ve got into functionality and go on with my life. No point wasting time shining shit when there’s sci-fi to read and slippers to knit and naps to take.

Do I care about homemaking? Not in the way he means. I consider it a chore. A labor of love one does out of duty, not self-expression.

Cleaning house is boring, repetitive, unsatisfying, and wholly uninteresting. It is menial labor, and not challenging. I’m humble enough to find a certain amount of honor in it, but I’m never gonna say its stimulating. Not by a long shot. I know what I like when I see it, but Martha Stewart I ain’t.

…
Anyway, he’d said that in response to what I’d said immediately before:

“If we moved to a real town, I could get a real job.” The idea was so foreign to me that I almost couldn’t wrap my head around it. “It’s been so long since I’ve even thought about having a real job that I don’t even know if I want one.”

And that’s when he said, “I don’t think you want to be a housewife.”

I was listening closely, and he wasn’t saying ‘you’re a shitty housewife,’ which is what I had started to hear. He was actually saying, ‘I think you’d be happier doing something you care about.’

And hot damn if he isn’t right.

…
Brett likes working with Jimbo, of course, but he says he can’t stand to build more S-V houses for whiny, freaky, stingy roos. He saw the jobs that Ron and Jeff are doing, and he wants to do that instead.

He likes our Iowa lifestyle, of course, but he loved the mountain environment and coveted the stunning view off of Ron’s porch.

He went on and on about the views he saw and the air he breathed and the smells of sage and pine. In fact, I had to remind him three or four times that I know about mountains, I understand mountain roads (with the crazy switchbacks and utter lack of safety railings next to hundred foot vertical drops) and the mildness of winter, the scent of old growth forest, the lack of bugs, and the stunning vistas. “You’re the flatlander, honey! Not me!” I laughed with him as he babbled on. “I come from old-growth coastal rain forests, mountains, and high deserts. Iowa was so weird and foreign to me when I first got here.”

“I loved the smell, Mush,” he told me. “The place spoke to me. I’ve been there I don’t know how many times before and it never really did much, but this time I wanted to move there. It spoke to me.”

…
We still have eight years left on our mortgage. I think we’ll have to finish remodeling in order to sell or rent the property, which will take time. Meaning we don’t have any plans to go anywhere immediately.

But it’s so fun, so weird! Just the other day, we were going to go on living in Batavia for an endless period, slugging through the seasons and slowly remodeling the house… forever. And ever. Ad nauseum.

But now? Suddenly a goal! Something to work toward. The possibility of something new and different. A challenge or two, even! Brett tells me this latest round of Mandala jobs he’s doing is much more bearable, simply knowing that they’re among the last.

…
While I haven’t suffered the ‘I hate Fairfield’ syndrome in its most overwhelming form, something worse has happened to me and I hadn’t even realized it. Hadn’t let myself realize it.

I’d given up.

I don’t do anything I care about anymore.

I don’t do music or theatre because I’ve already done what there is to do here. There are only so many opportunities in a town of this size. I’ve already conquered the local theatre scene, as it were.

And there are never enough great musicians in such a small population to make a great band. (If you have a killer drummer, you can’t find a decent bass player. If you have a brilliant guitar player, your keyboardist is a poser.) And even if you did manage to put together a great band, where would you play?

As for my day job, the last time I was excited about a job was when I ‘changed careers’ and started at LISCO, and that was years ago. Since then I haven’t really learned anything new – other than teaching myself web mastering out of sheer boredom and desperation. I stay because it’s comfortable and familiar, and because I can’t think of another job in Fairfield that I actually want to do.

I didn’t used to be like this! I used to quit jobs as soon as I got bored, to go find something else to learn. I used to be an intellectual. I used to be excited by new ideas, new things, new viewpoints.

If confronted with the want-ads from a ‘real’ town, like Denver for instance, what would I look for? What would I want to do? What would be stimulating, interesting, amusing? Ye gods, I have been so dull for so long that I can no longer decide what I want out of a job, and I find myself much more likely to describe what I would be ‘willing to put up with.’

I used to manifest jobs, for chrissake! I’d sit down and decide what I wanted to do, with what kind of people, pace, and environment. I’d define my commute, my pay, and hours. And then I’d go out and find that exact job.

I’m a performer, an extrovert. By definition I feel better when I get attention. These days I have five or six women friends I feel close enough to call for a coffee date, but once I knew literally half the people in town.

I rarely do anything social any more. I rarely want to do anything social. It occurs to me that people have become boring to me because I’m boring, I have nothing I’m excited to share, I have nothing I care to talk about.

I know I need more social stimulation but I’ve quit making new friends. I have no idea how to “try” to make friends; one makes friends as a consequence of doing things. And I don’t do anything because… well, let me be brutally honest: I don’t do anything because I’m a snob, an elitist. A stuck-up bitch, even.

I’d rather do nothing than something half-assed. I’ve paid my dues, I see no reason to be in yet another mediocre band, or go to another mediocre party, or do another small town show. (I have a mediocre job because it’s a known quantity and I couldn’t find another part-time job in town that paid the same, but if I didn’t need it, I wouldn’t do it either.)

A portion of this really is the constant fatigue and other weird shit that’s been plaguing me physically for the past few years. But. Even if I don’t talk about it, I know I’m not as exhausted and disassociated when I’m out of town or doing something that genuinely interests me. My symptoms are more manageable when I’m being myself, utilizing the skills God gave me, engaged and invested in what I’m doing.

…
In my own defense, though, I didn’t give up deliberately. I’ve always been a snob, but I never meant to cut off my nose to spite my face. I never intended to isolate myself or dry up. I simply tried to adjust to my life as it appeared to have ‘turned out.’ I was and am doing my best. Unfortunately, in doing my best I seem to have cut off all the parts that made me a vibrant creature.

It seems Brett’s not the only one feeling stagnant, doesn’t it? Who knew.

Yes, we’ve decided to move. To trendy Colorado, of all places. (Where trustifarian ski bums and crunchy ‘environmentalist’ neo-hippies will replace roos in our lexicon of mean jokes and insulting remarks, no doubt!)

…
I realize that the old saw is true: wherever you go, there you are. Yet the mere idea of new jobs, new choices, and new vistas perks me up considerably. Some musty part of my brain seems to be kicking on after years of disuse.

I’ve never, ever lived in the same house for this long in my life. I’m just plain old accustomed to starting over every so often. It’s good to get rid of all the old shit that’s accumulating and it’s good to test your boundaries. It’s good to see what’s out there, and it’s good to see what you can make out of the situations you find.

(It’s also good for a couple to pit themselves against the world at large, rather than stifle in some safe cocoon and pit themselves against each other. A common foe has ever bound the ranks together.)

“It seems we might not be the kind of people who live in one house for twenty years,” I said to Brett. “Since we’ve both moved so frequently all our lives, maybe we’re just not meant to dwell in one spot forever. It’s not like we have kids in school or anything to hold us back.”

“Could be,” he grinned back. “We do need to figure out a way to keep the equity in the houses we buy, at least.” And he smiled at me in a way that’s been missing for months, and I smiled a real smile back, and I felt like we were in the same orbit again.

We sat and talked, really talked, about our thoughts and feelings in a way that hasn’t happened since… well, since we bought our current place. Since the last time we actually did something that required our solidarity and concentrated effort.

…
” I don’t really hate Iowa, you know.” Brett said, sighing. “I’m from the Midwest. I am a flatlander.”

“Still, change is good,” I offered. “I’m a left-coaster, but I’ve been here for fifteen years. This is nothing like where I’m from. People change.”

“Yeah. I want to do something new, try something else. But I don’t hate it here, especially not here,” indicating the farm around us by waving his arm. “This is still the best place to be, if you’re going to be in Iowa.”

I looked fondly around at our property, green and lush in August, dappled in the evening sunlight. “Yeah, it is really nice here.” And then I giggled as I slapped a bug off my arm. “If you like mosquitoes!”

…
And then we went to pick up a pizza from the BP, because I had been too busy getting thoroughly ravished by my man who’d been gone for eight days to cook any dinner, and best of all, since the pizza place became a BP instead of a Conoco they have these things they call ‘DG Teasers’ – no idea why they’re called that – which are actually ‘cheese oles,’ which are actually nothing more than elongated tater-tots with plastic cheese in the middle, which I used to get at The Den and which I totally freakin’ love for all their greasy, fried, potato-y cheesy goodness.

And I even shared a couple of them with my husband.
——–