Nothing Right Rage

I've tried, and tried and tried, but here it is, everything spoiled.
Nothing right. I would give up, but I already gave up, at least I told
her I did. Last week, on precious Monday, when even the angle of the
furniture with the floor was wrong.

I've given up trying to please you, I said. I don't care what you think
anymore. You can say I'm crazy, lazy and wrong. And you'll be right.
All the times up to now I was just trying to do things the way I though
you wanted them done. Did that please you? No. So from now on, when you
think I'm lazy, crazy and wrong, you should know, you're right. I'll be
doing those things because I want to not to please you.

I said all those things. Maybe I was looking for a reaction, the start
of a fission event or worse, but the only response was a limp roll of
eyeballs, a breath that could have been a sigh, and the neat trot of
footsteps towards the bedroom door. I did try for a few hours to do
what I wanted, and not care what she thought. But I learned some things
about myself so I stopped, and now I can't say I give up again, not
without it being plain that it's just a token thing to say.

The three things I learned about myself are:
One - I've become so paranoid about what would be the right thing to do
that I don't know what would be the wrong thing either. How can I
deliberately annoy her without this vital information? I might
accidentally do what she wants and not know about it.
Two - If I'm obsessed with doing everything to wind her up, then I'm
doing what she wants (or rather not wants). The point is I'm still not
doing what I want.
Three - When I take away the right way and the wrong way and focus on
what I want to do instead, I realise that there really isn't very much
left.

I'm sure that years ago, before we were going out, and even when we
were first going out, I had things to do. Football, for example. I
couldn't play because of my leg, but there was always football to
watch. Down the pub on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday night. Round
Steve's bedsit on Saturday, on his sofa, noses frying on his plasma
screen. Or crumpled on my sofa, Sunday lunchtimes, with the 5 minutes
of Grandstand the video had captured before it drifted to the OU. And
drinking. With the footie there was always drinking. And sometimes
talking too, for the pint between the tongue loosening third, and the
bladder filling fifth. Oh yeah and there were girls too. Chatting up
girls. Never too fussy me, that was what Steve said, but the truth was
they all loved me. Loved the way I stared into their eyes, really
thought I was paying them attention. Course, I'm deaf in my right ear,
so I have to lip read, which takes concentration. By pint number six or
seven, my concentration's gone, and I'd nod at anything. Bloody Noddy,
Steve called me. Still, it worked. Well, kept them interested long
enough for a snog. Never let it go any further. The one time I did,
well look at the trouble I'm in now.

So why am I so bothered about making things right for her? Well I like
her. I should say I love her, but that isn't the way it comes out. It
never has, always been a sore point. But I do like her, a lot. Respect
her, respect her opinions. I enjoy being around her, even if now the
only things she says are bad. It wasn't always like that. I'd like it
to be how it was when we first met. Before we had to stay together,
before we'd dug these trenches and lobbed the first gas over the top.
This is guilt, isn't it? I haven't treated her well, she'd soon tell
you that. All I had to do was look after the baby.

When the baby was new born, she went for a pee. It was my
responsibility to stay by the machine. All I had to do was watch, but
nobody said what to watch for. All those little lines on the monitor
didn't mean much to me. Why couldn't I see? Why couldn't I see she'd
stopped moving? She was so little and so quiet, I could hardly tell
when she was awake. I watched her, dying, although I didn't know that
at the time. Her nose, which would have grown to be the same as her
mother's, flickered, her lungs gulped and she drifted away. And I just
watched, for minutes, they told me three minutes, before the alarm when
off. It stunned me, stunned me that something was wrong. How could
anything be wrong with her? We were through the worst. The rest was
routine they said. But it wasn't routine. And in came her mother,
screaming, dripbag dragging behind, collapsing across the room.

I know I can never make it up to her. If good things were pennies, I
could never stack them high enough. There aren't enough pennies in the
world. But she could let me stack a few.