How To Fight Bed Bugs

A join of minutes before I was also in a deep sleep until a sound from the great beyond came up and crawled into my quiet place. Like a sudden intruder barging into my personal night, my husband made a crashing grumble that resembled the choke of a car motor and a dying a person. I hated his snoring. And no, hate is not too harsh a word for the middle of the night, when the sweet call of sleep still beckons alongside a jack hammer.

My poor husband lied naked with goose bumps because he had no covers over him while his loving wife sat with clenched fists. I threw the covers on him and said in a nasty terrific tone, "Aren't you cold?"

I flopped down next to him and got a speck of relief as my elbow pressed hard into his back. And then he woke up. For some guess I conception I could get away with poking him. Just like a child accidentally punching her sibling in the face to see how far her torment can go without realizing the consequences.

And then I saw it, as if I suddenly regained consciousness from being possessed by an evil demon. I hurt him. I was the intruder now. I saw in his face, bewilderment, fear, and disgust. I pulled the covers over my head, putting myself in jail and peering out of the holes of the blanket with guilt.

We spent the rest of the night trying to work ourselves out of the knot I had caused. I woke the next morning after about twenty minutes of sleep gazing at our royal purple sheets. When we fight I don't understand why we chose such an eager color.

That day the client I was finding sat opposite her husband. She was puffy and had a fierce jack lantern face. She pointed her finger at him, her breath short and sporadic as she yelled at him. "I can't handle it anymore. I can't keep taking care of you like this. You wake up and you do nothing! If I didn't cook for you I seriously wonder if you would die of starvation! If I didn't clean up our house would be a pig sty. I can't keep doing this!"

She went on and on and on. He slumped, and listened, and made puppy-like noises that were apologetic and devotional like it was his place to cower and take the blows.

"I take care of everyone." She whined.

When I noticed the tears in her husband's eyes I conception for sure this would soften her heart, but it made her angrier. "Oh don't do that." She said to him slowing her speech down so that each word was pronounced with a hiss. "Don't sit there and whimper like you're the victim here." Then she started whimpering herself, "I just want person to take care of me for once. Is that too much to ask?" She looked at me for some confirmation which I have no idea if I was able provide. My face was frozen, my lips slightly parted like I was trapped in a block of ice.

Wife. What a word. The big white gowns hide so much, container so much prospect and unrelenting ideas of perfection. I remember the partner I conception I would be-even tempered, never threatened by someone else woman. I had my perfection all lined up when I was single. It was easy to see myself in all those excellent ways. But when I began my relationship, the real me started to surface. All those dinky bugs that lay dormant and asleep woke up, and I became...imperfect. dinky did I know I wasn't just marrying the soothing salve of commitment that takes the edge off the loneliness. I was marrying something far more threatening-my dark side.

I asked her to pause so that we could hear what her husband was feeling. We both looked at him and waited. His face seemed to be melting, his mouth drooping down into a frown. At that occasion I sensed a well-known revulsion I've felt towards my husband when he's vulnerable. He cried and wiped his nose with the sleeve of his shirt even though he was clutching a tissue. My husband does that.

When he looked at her it was clear that he felt differently about his wife then I did. I felt she was being too hard on him, and her anger was making it difficult for him to express himself. I judged her for being so out of control, irrational, and unkind. I also suspected the tiny, twisted ball of astonishment I felt in my solar plexus had to do with the unfortunate kinship I had with this woman.

My husband once told me that he didn't feel like he could express his darker emotions to me because it seemed to freak me out. And it's true. I've caught myself panicking around his suffering. Getting angry at him for being...well, human.

I had two unconscious expectations that were now just slightly arrival forward. That because I loved my husband so much he was not allowed to hurt. It caused me to squirm. And the other, peeking out from under my wedding gown-because I loved my husband so much it meant I had to do something about his suffering. This also caused me to squirm.

When my client's husband looked at her I saw that there was a whole story in his eyes of who she was to him. I could tell he saw more than just her anger. "I know I haven't been doing my part. I'm just not good at that kind of stuff."

"That's bullshit!" she yelled and was about to continue when I interrupted her.

"Please. Let's just see what else he has to say." But he didn't. He just held his face in his hands, and in that occasion of silence I sensed the undertow of fear in the room. We were beyond doubt wading in it. These two people, who have been married for thirty years, were immensely afraid of each other. Neither of them knew how to quote to each other's dark sides. I was afraid too. Afraid that there was nothing else there but this anger, this insecurity, this deep fear that we are all ugly, ugly, humans.

I wish I could say that I helped this couple. That I somehow offered a great tool or advice that wholly turned their relationship around for the better. Out of desperation I asked them to say what they appreciated about each other.

The husband sat up and took the cue, like he had done this many times before, thrown in the towel and lavished her with appreciation. "What I love about Suzanne is her strength. Her quality to put up with all of us..." To this she huffed, and he raised his shoulders to his ears and looked down at the floor. "I love the way she takes care of our dogs. She has so much love to give." The three of us clung onto those half-attempted words as a shimmer of light at the covering of a deep well.

She squinted at him from over the room, her arms crossed over her chest. I conception she wasn't going to give anything but to my surprise there was some tenderness in her voice. "I love him. I do. We've been straight through a lot together. He's seen me go straight through some horrible shit and he hasn't left my side." They looked at each other. There was a glimmer of something old and well kept, possibly familiarity, possibly all the scenes passing before their eyes, the way they have held on.

Our time was up. I handed them their words of appreciation like a physician would hand a lollipop to a child. I hoped they would suck on those words at least a join of hours after the session.

Later that night I apologized to my husband for losing my shit on him before we even got out of bed. When we have our 'check-ins' we share the same pillow while finding at each other. "I beyond doubt wonder who I am with you sometimes." I said.

And my husband looked at me like he saw the whole story.

It is potential that there is only one sin a therapist can make-believing that we are not like the clients we see. Without this irony we lose perspective and forget how to forgive ourselves. We forget that every client that comes into see us has claim to the same struggles we have. This might be hard to admit, that all of our schooling didn't give us a free ride-hovering above the most mundane suffering. But in the end that's where we all are right, on the same boat.