AM I TRYING TOO HARD IN MY MARRIAGE? WORRIED MUCH

I am full of faults o, yet I still feel like I deserve better. But why? It’s been long since I poured out my soul to myself. Today, I remembered how better it felt after writing down my feelings since I can’t think of who to speak to and I have never successfully kept a hardcover diary for even one month.
I feel so sad right now, like I am trying too hard, like I have tried more than is necessary, too hard all these years in my marriage. I know that marriage is hard work. I know sometimes are sweet and some times are not sweet. When I try to compare a little, it seems there are more not sweet than sweet moments in reality. I am not alone but it feels so companionless, harmattan cold and lonely. When I put in effort and give it everything, things pick up but I can’t do that forever na, struggling and working hard hard hard, when will I just relax and watch how things work on their own without any effort. Sometimes I want to feel like the one being dragged and pulled and helped. Sometimes I want to feel like the laid back one who deserves encouragement. I want to feel support and encouragement when I engage in the things that I love doing as an individual.

We are moving forward and growing older, maybe I wish for too much. Maybe I ask for too much. Maybe I don’t deserve all that I wish for in marriage. Maybe I have forgotten where I come from and trying to be who I’m not.
I come from a very humble background, so humble that when I lost my father in Secondarily School back then, I needed Scholarship to go further and thankfully it happened. Why do I have this feeling like I’m being treated based on my birth background? Like based on the fact that I grew up bush, with little, so, I don’t deserve more? Sha, shouldn’t I be grateful at least for everything life has given me considering where my journey on earth started? I know, but it’s
hard. I try to be happy and thankful for everything, I try to.

If my marriage had started with abundance and luxury, I’d have called myself a gold bigger but, it started with just a small TV in the bedroom, no TV in the sitting room. 2 small cooking pots in the kitchen balanced on a table top gas cooker.  No refrigerator, no freezer. Running tap water poured in the glass for drinking. No DSTV, No Dining Area, no Oven, no microwave. I remember My market list in my first year of marriage… It used to be something like:
200 Naira iced fish
50 Naira vegetables
50 Naira maggi cubes
50 Naira salt
100 Naira tomatoes
1 bottle palm oil
1 bottle groundnut oil Etc and the food was delicious. When we started to afford bread and scrambled eggs in the mornings, it was wonderful because we mentioned the name of the person God used to bring us to Abuja and while eating those bread slices with my well scrambled eggs and hot chocolate drink (Tea) on Saturday mornings, prayed for her that God blesses  more her for helping ‘us’ gain employment in the FCT.

I sit down now in the kitchen, while cooking edikaikong and fried rice with chicken, and ponder over it all. The first year of my marriage were simple yet most enjoyed and beautiful, even though there was no rug in the sitting room and no sofa to sit on… What do you even need a sofa for when there’s no Television to watch sef. However,it still feels like those empty-space-house years were easier and more enjoyable than the years when God provided employment and some kind of stability. When there was nothing, there was hope and because there was hope, there was Life.
Those early years of my marriage,  I didn’t have to TRY HARD. I didn’t have to watch “war room” I didn’t have to lai lai. Yet, it worked effortlessly on it’s own. If I just sit and watch today, I don’t know what will happen. In my heart it feels lonely even with a house full of people. I want to feel loved. I want to truly feel carried along. I want to feel like a part of it all but don’t know how.

Honestly, I was taught that it is solely the woman’s duty to make a marriage work and I believed that lie for so long. Now, I want to continue believing THAT but I can’t unknow what I have come to know. I cannot unlearn what I have learnt in these few years of experience on planet earth. If only I can continue to see myself as the one who wears that cap of ‘making it work by fire by force’ I always tell other women that every marriage is different and I know this is true. Mine is veeeeeerryyyyy different. I don’t feel included at all. I don’t feel like my opinion still matters at all. I wish I can be like Eddie Murphy’s proposed wife in ‘Coming To America’ she was ready to not have an opinion, to just be a ‘yes sir’ wife and be happy just like that but, no matter how hard I try to just do follow follow, it’s not me. My spirit and soul and body always have opinion to share and, want to feel like I’m also incharge of this thing…

 There are things I used to enjoy doing that I no longer willingly want to do. There are emotions I used to enjoy feeling that I try to not show anymore.
Am I right to feel like I shouldn’t be the only one setting aside time to pray for my marriage? My idea of marriage might be unreasonable and unrealistic sha. If only I knew that the hard work will be this hard for some wives, I would have come into this world a man.