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Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends...

As always, I am composing this in a corner of the basement, home to our Dell.  The Closer is playing on the TV, the missus is snoring intermittently in the recliner facing the TV.  I find the noise distracting, but turning off the television frequently wakes her, and I want to get this done without interruption.

Since I am silently communicating near a full chair, why not steal a cinematic trope from the Eastwood files?

The Good:  Earlier this week, we finally tied up a bunch of legal stuff.  We now have wills, advanced medical directives, and a special needs trust for my eldest.  This has been nagging at us for the twenty years that we have had heirs, and it is truly a relief to have this off the table.  All grown up, right?  Yeah, sure.

The Bad:  The basement is no longer my refuge.  Our only cable connection is down here, and the missus falls asleep here every night.  The long implied, and more recently explicit, ceding of this space to me as a private haven is gone.  My resentment is growing daily.  Last week, I snapped at her about turning the TV back on while I was attempting to listen to a podcast.  Why do you get to decide that your slumber entertainment trumps my waking pastimes?  I was chapped, for sure, but the reason was a canard. 

I was actually upset about two things.  One, my sanctuary has been taken from me.  Two, next month it will one year since we shared any real intimacy.  We haven't spoken about either issue, at all.  I don't know if she is bothered about the latter.  I think she is oblivious about the former.  I almost~~almost~~broached the subject before she left for therapy last week.  I wanted to apologize for my outburst, and calmly share the real issues that were lurking beneath it.  And I couldn't do it.  Close only counts in dancing and hand grenades, and we are doing neither.

The Ugly:  My funk, my pink fog, is deepening.  I desperately want to change into a skirt and heels as I write, and that's with her in the room.  I am reaching the point where I don't care whether she sees something that she can't unsee.  This nasty bit of passive aggression would be much easier than actually having a frank talk with her, and far more destructive.  What makes me see this as a solution?  What prompts me to lash out like this, when constructive solutions are at hand?  I think I know what I need to discuss in therapy next Tuesday.

After a couple of pretty sane years, I can feel the walls closing in on me again.  I am thinking about my gender much more in the last month than I have for a great while.  It feels like I'm going back to that awful place I was in fall 2007.  I can't imagine that it could be that bad again, but it worries me anyway.  After such a long time of not pushing the envelope with my wife, over two years, I fear that I am going to feel the need to stretch Leslie out again.  My marriage won't withstand that, I believe.  I feel powerless to do anything about it.