I am experiencing a new emotion today.
Sadness.
Oh, wait. No, that’s not really new for me, is it? Nor will it be a shock for those who read these words. I’m sure most will roll their eyes and shake their heads and ask themselves, ‘Really? Again? Why do I continue to read this drivel? I should get back to work. Oh, right, work. Ok, hearing about his sadness for the billionth time is still more enjoyable than working, at least for now. I’ll read on…’
I’ve not been crying or struggling to breathe. Just folded deeply into the blankets of hopeless melancholy. I am doing a fairly good job with teaching at the moment, and that is highlight of my redeeming attributes at the moment. Every other area leaves me looking around and stammering as I acknowledge where my life is.
The role of uncle is turning out to be one that requires endless love, unending worry and fear, and the lack of any power to make a difference as you see the destination clearly in the future and have no ability to alter the course or make an impact to deter the unavoidable.
The role of self-supportive, capable adult is also expertly skilled at evading my grasp. After realizing I was eighty some dollars overdrawn yesterday, I did three massages—one late last night, two early this morning. While rushing to the bank to deposit the cash to move to the black yet again, I called to check the balance, hoping my paycheck might have been deposited early. Within the hours I was asleep, my debt had increase to a little over three hundred in the whole. After freaking out (yet secretly hoping) that someone had broken into my account, I got online and saw that They had charged me over two hundred in overdraft charges. Fun. I decided to keep the cash, since even if I put it all in, I wouldn’t begin to dig out of the hole, and I still have things I have to purchase for being with the kids at outdoor lab all next week. Being in the hole is not a new sensation for me. However, I’d forgotten what it was like to face that particular joy on my own. When it happened with Chad, to me it was just a little bump. We would be fine. Things would turn around. We had all we really needed, so screw our absence of money. Things look and feel a lot different without him to be my mirror of what is really important.
The role of well-balanced sanity is so far left field that it seems like a distant fairy tale. As much as I talk myself through it, as much as others offer ‘reality,’ as much as I ‘accept’ the truth, the core of me is still waiting for Chad to come back. I don’t really realize that all the time. I’ve done a fairly decent job of continuing to live, to force myself to have experiences, to be in the moment. However, there are instances where I realize I am on pause, counting each moment as filler (not as my real life, just a formality I have to role play until my life starts again). The thought of him eternally absent still feels foreign and wrong—inconceivably impossible. It’s as if the things I do now don’t count. There aren’t consequences—good or bad. However, there are—no matter the sensations of this quasi-life.
I remember I used to be much better at role-playing. Actually, I nailed it to perfection. Having experienced a life where I had to do very little playing of roles, I find that I have either forgotten or have lost the ability.
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