Everyday Stranger

Some Days Are Better Than Others

It seems like all of the lives around me, and mine included, are about as messy as they have ever been. Marriages and relationships are popping apart like bubble wrap. Maybe it's due to "that time of year". Or maybe so many people's lives have been unsatisfactory for so long that they are just now throwing up their hands in disgust, just now reaching that boiling point.

Partner Unit and I are like two ships passing in the night in our household. We barely talk, yet some moments are better than others. He is barely sleeping, going to bed at eleven, up at three am, not sleeping any more than that. But he constantly comes back into the bedroom to check on me, to sit on the bed and try to talk before getting up and leaving. We try to talk, to reach out across the cotton duvet and find another person there, but somehow our words can't make it across the covers, regardless of how much either of us want them to.

Strangely enough, since our battle last week I have been sleeping. Me. Sleeping. For the first time in over a year, I can sleep without sleeping tablets. If I get woken up I can fall back asleep. In fact, I want to spend all of my time sleeping, wrapped up in the covers, the fireplace roaring to ward off the -10 chill creeping along the floorboards. I don't want to leave the bed, to face the jobsites on the web, the rejections in the mail account.

I know what's happening. Combine me wanting to sleep with my desire to not eat (I drink pot after pot of coffee and don't eat until the evening, when he comes home and meals are part of the daily ritual), not leave the house except to walk the dog, and not shower, and it doesn't take a medical expert to understand what is going on. It's called depression. And Partner Unit is severely anxious. We are two people coming apart at the seams in the same space, unable to help each other. There are times when I reach out to hug him or touch his arm, and he moves away. We are not that couple anymore. The touching is bittersweet. We can want it, but the truth is we have to start weaning ourselves off of it. In bed we are two carefully wrapped coccoons, bundled up in our own little spaces, carefully not touching when we are unconscious just as we do not touch when we are conscious.

He won't even look at me. And that's what feels worst of all.

Our relationship starting coming apart a year ago. January 2, 2003, to be exact. We had the most vicious argument of our lives together, and his behavior not only infuriated me, it also terrified me. The awesome power of anger was made patently clear to me, and I must say it was that day that I started to truly pull away from him, to catalog an internal diary that should have been part of a coupled-life, but wasn't.

The truth is, sometimes I want to hug him and tell him life will be ok. To make him laugh and try to ease the frown from his forehead. And sometimes I want to just stiffen my upper lip, and know that this is inevitable. I hate seeing him in pain, seeing him sad, seeing him broken. Our relationship is difficult but I do love him, and I do want him nothing but happiness. I want him to be loved in the way he deserves to be loved, and not the broken landscape that comes from being loved by me. I just want to hug him and tell him...Thank you. Thank you for taking a chance on me. Thank you for being kind in all those times I went wiggy. Thank you for loving me and please know that I have always loved you, and always will. I'm so sorry, darling. I'm so sorry.

And misery loves company. Best Friend struggles with what appears to be the remnants of his marriage (I am not a factor in this one, I am relieved to say). Dear Mate's wife has declared their marriage over, due in the largest part to me. She and I have always basically been enemies. She hates the closeness that DM and I have, she feels threatened by me, and she and I have never seen eye to eye. The final straw was this-once I was laid off from Company X, she was moved into my old group (she works for Company X too, as does DM, Best Friend, and Partner Unit. One big incestuous family, really). The day after the lay-offs, someone provided her with an itemized copy of my phone bill. Then someone (?) provided her with the last year's worth of my phone bills. She is now convinced that he and I are lovers, and they have called it quits.

I should be angry that she has my old phone bills, but I simply don't care anymore. I should be furious that such a breach of security occurred within Company X, but it just doesn't matter anymore. I want to weed myself of any association with Company X, I have nothing but a glowing apathy for that company now.

In a freaky coincidence of Bell-ism misbehavior, Mr. Y's wife found a copy of his mobile phone bill (I think the message here, to all those with turbulent relationships, is to watch your phone bills. Trouble, man. Trouble.) A confrontation ensued over my number (and a number of other issues in their lives), and they too are splitting.

He was extremely broken-up about it in December, but I think that his head is coming around the idea now, and he is beginning to see a light at the end of the tunnel.

And maybe I am a part of that light.

We talk daily now, and mail many times a day. He has become someone that I curl up to and try to talk to. He is someone that knows me and knows how I think and act, and I try to let him in as a friend now, not a lover. I am a bit skittish emotionally just now, and I know he is, too. Sometimes, I feel the worry and concern creep into my heart-shouldn't he seem more excited about the prospect-after all these years and all these chances later-of being with me? Or is he just playing it cool? I know breakups are hard and they hurt-his hurts, and mine hurts. But...

I don't know the dream that is my life just now. I am not sure what it is that I am looking for, or what's at the end of the road. But there are a few things in this big blue world that I know I love. Writing. Mr. Y. My family. My blog.

When you know how you think you want the rest of your life to look, you're anxious to get it moving in that direction and start living it.

Here's to 2004.

-H.

PS-I am now short-listed for three jobs, and Dream Job has come through with an interview date-I fly to London to interview on January 14th (unfortunately, at my own expense, but then I am only one of two candidates, so keep your fingers crossed just a bit longer...And I need my Swedish citizenship and I need it NOW so cross some toes, too...)

PPS-more upbeat stuff tomorrow.

Posted by Everydaystranger at January 6, 2004 08:55 AM | TrackBack