Trust

It's hard when you're juggling about eleven-hundred little life items and something throws number 1101 right into the air above your left shoulder. I know. I'm not some magic man doing more than any human can, but I'm pulling a lot of weight for my class, regular-dude. I got the finances and a lot of the kid management, and all the trash handling, all the trips to the basement I hate more than anything on earth, all the non-flower-related yard work, all the car maintenance and recordkeeping, stuff like that. I keep the balls in the air, but don't fuck with me right?

I'm sitting at the desk in our house and I'm doing something I don't know what, because it's night, and the dryer's running and the kid's asleep. I haven't gone anywhere, and I don't care to, but sometimes I should. The way you should go visit your mom, the way you should get that degree, the way you should call your long-distance good friend. So I went out to some schmoozy shindig and come back later.

And I get the trust question. Because it's been about ten years, but I used to sneak cigarettes in the past. And cigarettes are my great vice.

Seriously, a decade in this thing, kids and a house and all that, and we're getting the raised eyebrows of a whiff of smoke? For real?

And it's got me thinking, because I trust her completely. All that she does, and all the places she goes, in a world she denies but I know is filled with chauvanists who sleep with their co-workers on their long trips together, and I don't blink an eye about her faith, her fidelity, her character. She is impervious, in my mind, whether it's true or not (and I believe it's true).

But I get the eyebrows. And I haven't smoked a cigarette, tonight or any night. I haven't smoked a cigarette in years and years and years. We almost broke up over a cigar once about nine years ago, for christ's sake, would I really be screwing with this arrangement at this point?

So what's with the looks? I don't know. I guess it's all about trust, and that's what I'm wondering about. That's all. I know she trusts me, because we're dependent on each other, we're connected, and every interaction is a reinforcement of that trust. People shouldn't start families and become this entangled if they don't have the trust. So I know she's got the trust. But I'm wondering to myself. How much?