Normalcy

Dear D,

I thought I might see a note from you this morning, but in retrospect I should have realized that was unlikely: you have so much to do in such a short time that every minute must already be allocated. On this side, of course, we spent the weekend packing Son 1 down to Hogwarts and moving him into his dorm. In the end we got him there just fine, with only a couple oddments inadvertently left back home. When we left yesterday he was largely moved in, and was readjusting to the rhythms of school. So that’s good.

I am less sure what to say about the last week, and about our phone call on Saturday. Certainly one thing you said is very true, namely, that it will take us a while to re-establish some kind of normality. (I can’t use that word without feeling the urge to echo Warren Harding and say “normalcy”.) But I would go one step farther and say that it is not clear to me what that normality will look like, when (or if) we get there.

I’m sad that you had a bad week, but not until Friday did you ever tell me you were having one. Perhaps I could have read between the lines of what you did say, and intuited it. But I won’t do that. Nor will I be your bulwark against the storms of the world. We have been friends and lovers; and of course it is the part of friends to talk to each other. When something troubling happens, of course friends can chip in with thoughts or opinions: “Gosh, have you considered this?” “Maybe what’s going on is that.” But to step beyond that point is to step beyond mere friendship into “love honor and cherish as long as you both shall live.” You already know that’s not a destination I have in mind.

Maybe we are just done. All human arrangements are mortal, so maybe our romance has just reached the end of its natural lifespan. I have wondered about that for a while; but I have held back saying anything because I know I am impulsive by nature, I know I am emotionally volatile, and so I never trust my own feelings. Whatever I’m feeling today, maybe I’ll feel the opposite tomorrow. It can be paralyzing, and so sometimes it takes me a very long time to decide what I “really” feel about something. And after all, there are still things between us that are very good. The sex, for instance, is consistently fantastic, and gets ever better. So it is a complicated picture.

But I do know that I’m not going back to a regimen of writing once every 24 hours. It will be a while before I call again. I don’t know what to say about the longer term, because of all the self-distrust that I just sketched out. I just don’t know.

Some time ago, on a happier day, you wrote me something to the effect that I was the reason you got out of bed in the morning. I wrote back to say “Oh surely not,” and you reminded me (quite rightly) not to tell you how you feel. I realize now that I misspoke myself during that conversation. Of course it would be foolish for me to tell you how you feel. But what I really meant was, “Please don’t let that be true.” I don’t want to be that important to anyone, or at any rate not to any adult. That’s not depression speaking, or self-abnegation, or any weird sense of failure or unworthiness. It is just a realization that if I should ever be that important to someone, it will end up landing us right here, where we are today. And that’s a troubling prospect.


Take care. Be well,
Hosea