A day in the life of the able-bodied wife.

I am the able-bodied spouse in my house. My husband is a non-combat-injured, disabled veteran. I am a capable, organized, strong-willed, physically strong woman. I am a driven perfectionist by nature, who is working with a less-than-perfect situation. I have chosen a strange, non-conformist lifestyle by choosing to marry this man. I don't talk about it much because that's just what it is. There is stress. There is pain. There is frustration. There is joy. There is love. It is what it is. I realize it's not as bad as many people have it. I'm grateful that things are the way they are, even when they suck.

My husband is 33. Ten years ago, he was a happy, healthy, active guy who heard our nation's call to arms and answered it by choosing one of the most difficult jobs in the army, Forward Observer. Not exactly the most civilian-adaptable career choice, but recruiters don't tell their young enlistees this, and this guy was planning to do this for a VERY long time when he signed up. He certainly didn't expect to fall and hurt himself while helping move the new furniture into his barracks in Korea, nor did he expect to have someone shut a huge iron gate on his arm in Germany. Each of those injuries created a permanent wound that there isn't a surgical fix for. He left the army with not only these injuries, but he had also lost his ability to physically compete in the sports he once loved, perform jobs he once loved, and had not picked up any useful new job skills through his service that could translate to a life outside the army. It was very much like starting over from scratch for him. It was not in his original plans and was a HUGE adjustment. He is still adjusting in many ways.

It's just the everyday stupid shit that no one plans on that can forever alter the course of a life. Each of those injuries slightly altered his life trajectory. One could even argue that these injuries saved his life by making him undeployable. The guy who took his place downrange did not come home. My husband did... which still makes him incredibly sad. It makes me sad for him, but at the same time, had it not all happened as it did, what *would* my life look like? Would I be married at all? Would I be a mother? Hard to tell. In either case, I live a mildly isolated lifestyle because there are not many people around me who can relate to my lifestyle. Most people simply don't get why I married him in the first place since he

I daily do the little things, and many of the big things that make civilized life possible in our household. Sometimes that means putting aside my own needs and wants to make sure my husband and son are taken care of, but that's sorta part of the wife/mom job description in the first place. There are days when my husband quite literally cannot move (after working on a big project, during heavy weather systems, after a rough day with the kid, etc.) and our shared duties become my duties, period. Not many people understand how or why I 'put up with it', because in our great age of feminism, it looks like I'm the subservient doormat of a wife. The way I see it, I'm treating a man how I'd like to be treated if found in a similar situation. I walk the fine line between making it possible for him to live as independent a life as he can and doing too much. If I do too much, I make him feel like less of a person. If I do too little, I put too much pressure on him to do more than he is able. It has taken me nearly six years to get to where I understand what he truly needs me to do. That is mostly just being 'here' when he needs me. That's not to say I don't get it wrong from time to time.

I am never really off duty as his wife. Our life is a never-ending stream of paperwork from the VA, appointments to keep, medications to remember, reactions to watch out for with the meds, lots of explaining to others why we live the way we do. It's a strange kind of normal even for us. My husband does his best to be a part of my world and to integrate as much as possible into the able-bodied world. He loves yardwork, so we've had to find adaptive tools, and I tend to remain on standby while he works in the yard to make sure he doesn't aggravate his issues or give himself heatstroke in an effort to show the world he can still DO something. He likes to do home improvement projects, I standby to pick up the slack or to call in reinforcements to make sure he *can* do what he sets out to do. I help fill out and manage paperwork. I keep track of finances. I remind my husband that he is loved, because it's pretty easy to forget some days.

He is loved. Very much so. This is a man who is loyal to a fault. He doesn't do illicit drugs, troll the bars late at night, search for porn when I'm out, or any other act of bastardry I've had committed against me in a relationship. On his good days he's got a great sense of humor. He's socially awkward like me, but bless his heart he tries when I drag him to uncomfortable social functions. He loves me for who I am, not for what my dress size is. He trusts me. He treats me with dignity and respect. He stands up for me and stands with me in times of tragedy or trial in my life. He has seen me at my worst and never walked away from me. On top of all of this- he is a damn good father to our son. His body may be limited, but his heart is not.

For all the things he is to me, he is still a man with limitations to the outside world. He lives in an odd sort of limbo in our society. He is a stay-at-home dad. He's not exactly welcome at mommy-and-me playtime, and similarly unwelcome in the circle of men. Schoolwork is complicated for him by the fact that he may have to read the same chapter three times just to absorb part of it. Not many employers have shown interest in boosting their quotas of 'handicapped' employees in such a tight job market, either. When you're choosing an employee- do you go for the guys who are fully physically able, or do you go for the equally qualified guy who needs a little more time and some reasonable modifications to his work load?

There are those who think it's an abomination that my husband receives any sort of assistance from the government through the VA Health System for his 'invisible' disabilities. From those folks I have learned that in order for anyone to truly qualify as disabled, they must first be missing limbs or visibly and horribly disfigured. Or mentally handicapped in an obvious way- preferably with helmets and other external gear so no one has to guess. For a guy to look absolutely normal and to have all his limbs intact, and to not have some cool and heroic story to explain how he came to be injured, well, he's just not handicapped enough for anyone to really care.

He is working daily on rebuilding his life from the ground up. He had to learn how to cope with debilitating pain on a daily basis in order to back down on his pain meds enough to actually have a life. He is going to school to learn a trade that might some day support our family. He has to improvise quite often in order to adapt this world to fit his needs because let's face it- even for able-bodied people, this world is not user-friendly sometimes. So, our goal each day is to do a little better than the day before. We keep working out the bugs together, but always working toward giving him the independence and autonomy he deserves and so badly needs.

I hurt for him because he hurts both physically and mentally. To be a man in a society that places a high premium on a man's ability to be physical and to be a provider in a body that doesn't allow a man to be physical or to fully provide is hard. Being unable to wrestle and roughhouse with his son is hard. Knowing so many people who went downrange and came home under a blanket of stars and stripes is hard. Knowing that his whole existence was altered by a faulty piece of concrete is hard. I watch him struggle daily with pain that can't be fixed and meds that can't go away, and hope that someday modern medicine will find a way to fix him and make him whole again so he can enjoy life as a young man with a family does. My husband is 33, but feels eighty. It's hard to watch someone you love hurt so much and know that whatever you do to help might hurt more, either emotionally or physically, it might hurt more... but that doesn't stop me from being here and trying. His physical state does not make him unloveable. It may make him difficult to get along with some days, but I sure do love this man.

I wish I could say that I was ever the patient and doting wife, but truth is, there are days when I get so incredibly frustrated that I have difficulty holding back the flow of tears because I just want things to be normal. Not 'normal' as applies to us, but NORMAL as applies to most other families- a normal that doesn't involve medication schedules, lifting limits, memory problems, personality changes from meds, lack of understanding from those around us, adaptive equipment, and him being able to be a part of the traditional world of men as he'd like to do. I do. I despise the medications he has to take to be able to function. I especially despise the medications that make him drowsy and change his personality. I want a day to come where his body CAN be repaired, and he CAN do what he wants to do without limitations. That he can mow the yard like the neighbor guys do, then go play ball with his son instead of being immobilized by pain afterwards. With current medical technology, it's not going to happen, so it is what it is.

My husband is one of the many invisible people with disabilities among us. So, here I am telling the world about him. Maybe someone else will benefit. Maybe more people will see and understand.