I read that there is a financial crisis—delicately called, lately, a meltdown.
I don't care.
Please don't be afraid of me.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Entry #3
I cooked tonight. Bangers and Mash. I'm not English, but my mother is. I'm neither Greek, but so is my father. Then my wife, for future reference let's call her "NM", vomited. I feel awful for NM, the poor woman, was it something I cooked; something she drank? I do not know.
Upon alighting for the market tonight, I went outside, she with a cigarette, and a drink. I asked her if she had any special requests. Her request: come home soon because I've been away all day and I miss you and I want to be with you.
You see, reader, despite my anger and the albatross I throw now and then—anyway too often—she nonetheless returns from work and her days-in-life with a desire to see me, with a desire to be with me. It is an unquestionable fact of my current state that her actions cause or impart to me a modicum of guilt; or at least, my fair share and more of what I undoubtedly deserve. I react, as I mentioned in Entry #1 and Entry #2, without grace.
Perhaps one day, many entries later, you and I will understand why it is that when I alighted for the market she says what she does. (A quick look tells me, and obviously you, that she says what she does because she loves me—but in my insolence I search for the deeper cause.) Upon my return we are each others' best friends. Upon eating, she throws up. She sleeps now. I have trimmed and tucked and made my best show, no performance, but a show—in black and white—where I am the Caretaker and she, the Hotel. Do you, like me, remember the Shining this well? Does anyone?
You see, I love her so desperately, that I can't bear to be burdensome, neither physical nor any other manner. (You will come to understand why.) Later I'll slip in beside her in bed. And tomorrow we'll wake up (mostly) together, my responsibilities including only those agreements for which she has made herself responsible. It seems that these agreements are all of them. . . . My pity, my hurtingest heart, my breasts, hot tears, Jamaicain barbs, and any cancer ever to consume me. These are yours, my dearest most loveliest NM. They are yours, darling.
But now, though, in return I suppose I'll want a magician's elixir; my very own and very personal double double toil and trouble. Were it only that she could stay away.
Upon alighting for the market tonight, I went outside, she with a cigarette, and a drink. I asked her if she had any special requests. Her request: come home soon because I've been away all day and I miss you and I want to be with you.
You see, reader, despite my anger and the albatross I throw now and then—anyway too often—she nonetheless returns from work and her days-in-life with a desire to see me, with a desire to be with me. It is an unquestionable fact of my current state that her actions cause or impart to me a modicum of guilt; or at least, my fair share and more of what I undoubtedly deserve. I react, as I mentioned in Entry #1 and Entry #2, without grace.
Perhaps one day, many entries later, you and I will understand why it is that when I alighted for the market she says what she does. (A quick look tells me, and obviously you, that she says what she does because she loves me—but in my insolence I search for the deeper cause.) Upon my return we are each others' best friends. Upon eating, she throws up. She sleeps now. I have trimmed and tucked and made my best show, no performance, but a show—in black and white—where I am the Caretaker and she, the Hotel. Do you, like me, remember the Shining this well? Does anyone?
You see, I love her so desperately, that I can't bear to be burdensome, neither physical nor any other manner. (You will come to understand why.) Later I'll slip in beside her in bed. And tomorrow we'll wake up (mostly) together, my responsibilities including only those agreements for which she has made herself responsible. It seems that these agreements are all of them. . . . My pity, my hurtingest heart, my breasts, hot tears, Jamaicain barbs, and any cancer ever to consume me. These are yours, my dearest most loveliest NM. They are yours, darling.
But now, though, in return I suppose I'll want a magician's elixir; my very own and very personal double double toil and trouble. Were it only that she could stay away.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Entry #2
Currently my wife dislikes me. "Dislike" is probably too strong a word in this context. So I'll weaken it: currently my wife is very upset with me. The problem with that, most recent of locutions, is that it doesn't capture how fear, resentment, and chagrin commingle, undoubtedly, in her; and how what I have, and haven't done have exacerbated her moods, not to mention mine. You are required a bit of a backstory.
In entry #1 I wrote that problems in work life and problems in home life have conspired to bring me to this point. They leave visible, tangible marks. In my anger or frustration some months ago, for example, I took it upon myself to create a dent in our wall with my fist, an unfortunate memorial and a fine piece of performance art, a paean to fools and blameless wives everywhere. Visible traces of anger like these lightly dot our apartment, but they have subsided for the most part and in the most recent months. The problem now, it seems, is not that I am not angry, nor that I don't express it willfully and with voice (Bravo, Contrabbasso!), but that the traces I leave are no longer visible. I have never hit her. But by, for loss of better locutions, gorging myself on yells and screams, I have obviously made her afraid of me. This to the point today, where we stand, somewhere between redemption and loss; in her own words, a breaking point.
I suppose not even that's true. My anger shows up most visibly not on our walls and what-nots, but on her face and in her expressions. We have been emotionally distant for months, sexually distant for even longer. Around November or December, our sex life became less than what I had imagined it would always be (conveniently forgetting that she is my wife, and I am her husband—marriages are not Euclidean spaces, constructed to keep something out or keep something in; they are topologies to which we give the form). It began because of her, stress, hypochondria, maybe something else or many other things to which I'm no longer privy. (Mostly) concretely, we went from a healthy sexual life to one in which our sexual contacts became less frequent. Around March or February the infrequency began to consume me. An awful, but recoverable, time at work stepped in. In June the simmer rose to a boil. In July I exploded. In August I evaporated.
The previous paragraph gives the impression that actions on her part may have caused our contemporary currency. But this is false. Sexual distance begets its emotional cousin, and for all the ways I have blamed her with respect to the former, fingers pointed for the latter metric must be pointed at me. When what we need most is to sit up in bed with one another, reading, either to one another, or to ourselves; when what we need is for me to be soft and gentle, focussed and intent on keeping close, I lost focus, I stewed. I obsessed over one part of our lives together. I forgot about the other parts.
Currently my wife is afraid of me. Currently her trust in me is battered and bruised. Currently it's my doing. I would like to end the post by flatly refusing to admit that because of me she might end it, and soon. But I cannot. Rather, I can, but the refusal of admission would be insincere, a Freudian's dream.
In entry #1 I wrote that problems in work life and problems in home life have conspired to bring me to this point. They leave visible, tangible marks. In my anger or frustration some months ago, for example, I took it upon myself to create a dent in our wall with my fist, an unfortunate memorial and a fine piece of performance art, a paean to fools and blameless wives everywhere. Visible traces of anger like these lightly dot our apartment, but they have subsided for the most part and in the most recent months. The problem now, it seems, is not that I am not angry, nor that I don't express it willfully and with voice (Bravo, Contrabbasso!), but that the traces I leave are no longer visible. I have never hit her. But by, for loss of better locutions, gorging myself on yells and screams, I have obviously made her afraid of me. This to the point today, where we stand, somewhere between redemption and loss; in her own words, a breaking point.
I suppose not even that's true. My anger shows up most visibly not on our walls and what-nots, but on her face and in her expressions. We have been emotionally distant for months, sexually distant for even longer. Around November or December, our sex life became less than what I had imagined it would always be (conveniently forgetting that she is my wife, and I am her husband—marriages are not Euclidean spaces, constructed to keep something out or keep something in; they are topologies to which we give the form). It began because of her, stress, hypochondria, maybe something else or many other things to which I'm no longer privy. (Mostly) concretely, we went from a healthy sexual life to one in which our sexual contacts became less frequent. Around March or February the infrequency began to consume me. An awful, but recoverable, time at work stepped in. In June the simmer rose to a boil. In July I exploded. In August I evaporated.
The previous paragraph gives the impression that actions on her part may have caused our contemporary currency. But this is false. Sexual distance begets its emotional cousin, and for all the ways I have blamed her with respect to the former, fingers pointed for the latter metric must be pointed at me. When what we need most is to sit up in bed with one another, reading, either to one another, or to ourselves; when what we need is for me to be soft and gentle, focussed and intent on keeping close, I lost focus, I stewed. I obsessed over one part of our lives together. I forgot about the other parts.
Currently my wife is afraid of me. Currently her trust in me is battered and bruised. Currently it's my doing. I would like to end the post by flatly refusing to admit that because of me she might end it, and soon. But I cannot. Rather, I can, but the refusal of admission would be insincere, a Freudian's dream.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Entry #1
Chance, fortune, and a bit of grace require that I post in somewhat vague terms. I am in my early 30's. I am married. I am desperately sad. I am lost. Work life and married life (an inconsequential ordering) conspire to cause self-pity and a near total loss of control.
Last night I lay awake, crying, sitting up, rocking myself back and forth, prostrate before myself and another, begging for my own forgiveness if not her forgiveness too. I am not sure which person or personality or whatever had appeared at that moment. I do know, though, that last night's plea was a familiar one: as a child of 12, and 16, and 18, then 22 and 25 or 26 I would lay awake at night begging sets of mental images to disappear. Now again in my mid 30's, and under the impression that I have lost or am losing control, I recognized that little boy again.
What brought me there again, I wonder. Some grace and the hope that I will continue to write require that I leave that information for later. I am not a teenager—although I act like one—and because of that I no longer feel certain that the thoughts I have had are real, as I had once been wont to say.
Obsessive, self-righteous, suicidal: a Steppenwolfian tyrant. I am a lunatic in a waiting room.
Last night I lay awake, crying, sitting up, rocking myself back and forth, prostrate before myself and another, begging for my own forgiveness if not her forgiveness too. I am not sure which person or personality or whatever had appeared at that moment. I do know, though, that last night's plea was a familiar one: as a child of 12, and 16, and 18, then 22 and 25 or 26 I would lay awake at night begging sets of mental images to disappear. Now again in my mid 30's, and under the impression that I have lost or am losing control, I recognized that little boy again.
What brought me there again, I wonder. Some grace and the hope that I will continue to write require that I leave that information for later. I am not a teenager—although I act like one—and because of that I no longer feel certain that the thoughts I have had are real, as I had once been wont to say.
Obsessive, self-righteous, suicidal: a Steppenwolfian tyrant. I am a lunatic in a waiting room.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)