Gratitude

Sometimes I feel that I don’t show my husband how much I appreciate him. He makes dinner and keeps up the house because he works from home and I commute an hour away for my job and he likes to show care by doing these things. He will let me buy what I want, do the hobbies that I want and the projects around the house within reason. He makes the majority of the money between us and we are comfortable.

I don’t want to seem like I don’t appreciate everything that he does, because I do appreciate it. He does these things without asking, he is the complete opposite of so many husbands out there that just sit on their asses and have their wives do all the cooking and cleaning after working all day. I fear that I might be turning into the lazy one. I do the laundry and I do help out and when I see something that needs to be done I’ll do it. Most of the time. I realized this morning that when I had to get a fork out of the dishwasher it hadn’t been emptied in a while. But since I was getting ready to leave for work, I couldn’t do much about it. If it’s still in that state when I get home, I’ll clean the kitchen for him.

He’s taking the cats to the vet today in between meetings in a job that has become highly stressful. He’s on meds to help calm him down and help him focus. I don’t know sometimes if I’m even helping at all or if I’m making things worse. He sent me some Instagram reels last night that he said to not look too far into, but it related directly to a discussion we had the day before. How can I not look at them and know that’s something that you are feeling? It’s something that we have talked about and I know that he feels like I don’t see the things that he does. But I do. I see it all. I just don’t know how to respond to it sometimes.

I feel it when he touches my shoulder or my hand. When he is near me. I see it when he grabs my plate after dinner or when he has made Sunday breakfast. Every sigh when he is frustrated with me because I can’t express what I’m trying to say but he is patiently waiting for me to finish. Every note of encouragement he silently gives me, and not so silently gives me. When he brings home ice cream because he knows it makes me happy, even though he knows it’s bad for me. Watching his horror movies in his office or when I’m not home because he knows I don’t like them.

I do see and feel everything that he does. Even if I don’t say it. I need to say it more. I will say it more.