I was trying to get the boys some breakfast this morning, before all of us bundled out the door (them to school, me to work). Wife has taken to sleeping in the living room -- or rather, to moving to the living room in the middle of the night because she says I snore too loudly for her to sleep through it. (Interestingly, D says I don't snore at all. I'm never awake at the time, so I couldn't tell you.)
So along about the time I was trying to balance a gallon of milk in one hand and a carton of eggs in the other, Wife toddled into the kitchen from the living room to tell me she had just had a terrible dream. Really? That's awful, what was it about? Apparently there was nothing more to it than that we were having some bitter fight about something; and then at the end of the dream, she said, I put my arm around her and told her everything would be all right. At that point she added, "But I guess that's not reality, is it?" and slunk off to the back of the house.
I was preoccupied with breakfast, so I didn't really say anything, but I also don't know what I would have said. Once upon a time I would have abandoned breakfast to follow her back there and try to talk to her about it. I don't know if that is what she wanted or expected. But today I had neither the time (the boys and I really were in a hurry) nor -- honestly -- the motivation. I couldn't think of what would have been the point.
Maybe that very lack of motivation is what she was dreaming about, in a way. What I mean is that maybe she senses it from me (and I guess it wouldn't be hard) and her unconscious mind was reacting to it. But the whole life in which I would have followed her back to the bedroom, in which I would be entangled enough that we could fight, seems like a distant world now, long ago and far away. And truly, we haven't fought about anything, not for months.
Isn't that better than it was?
Puritanism
8 hours ago
3 comments:
Oh yes, I know this. The inexplicable lack of feeling. And not knowing what to say or do. Do you "lie" and act as though you really care about what the other (for whom you used to care so deeply) is feeling? Or do you just blurt it out and say "I'm done, your dream is right." And then relief at the fact that you haven't the time to follow either inclination. Am I right?
You have my empathy.
Man, where is the s is silver lining when the entire picture seems so grey? Maybe in your recognition that the "we could"s"a distant world now."
In response to your final question: yeah, absolutely, it's far "better"--but only if the "best" is a condition of functional paralysis. And that'd be like being dead, wouldn't it? Then again lots of us are living through the exact same circle of Hell.
I'm not sure whether to feel sorry for you or to take what you wrote here, apply it to my life and do....something.
Kyra -- Yes on the relief. But also the whole unconcern is a relief, in a sense. I just don't care any more, on so many levels. That's the place where her dream was wrong: in the dream, I took her in my arms at the end and comforted her by telling her it would all be all right. But I won't, and it won't. That is just far in the past.
Sometimes I wonder if I even sound like the same person who wrote the first posts on this blog, back in 2007 and early 2008. It all sounds like my voice to me, but I'm judging from the inside and I don't expect my perspective to be very good.
Triste -- Ummm, gosh. Glad to help. (Or something like that.)
Personally when I am reading other people's blogs, the posts I like best are generally the ones that leave me with something to think about, even if I don't especially like where my thoughts take me. But your mileage may vary.
Are you in the same position of feeling blank unconcern at home? Are there posts I should be reading? Inquiring minds, and all that ....
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