Alone & Confused

I get this withering alone feeling. When I try to share with Carl what’s going on in our lives, and I get an empty, blank response, I find myself feeling abandoned.

At times, I feel guilty about these emotional responses. It seems like maturity and society dictate implacably that I shouldn’t be worrying about these things, much less talking about them. I certainly shouldn’t be writing about them, for all and sundry to see. Sacre bleu!

But further thinking tells me that these feelings are real and substantial. They are a dangerous part of what I’m experiencing – and of what Carl is enduring. They are a grim part of what anyone in a similar situation is feeling.

We ignore them at our peril.

Us

Carl and I have been together for 33 years, and we’ve always been comfortable with that togetherness. We’ve been good friends – wonderful friends – better friends than many married couples we’ve observed.

Thinking back, I’m not sure either of us was mature and open enough to really communicate – to truly share – to plan together.

But there was always that delicious feeling – that knowing – that comfort and confidence – of having a partner. A friend. That sense of being better off than lots of other people.

For some reason, Tom Wingfield springs to mind. He’s a character in The Glass Menagerie, a Tennessee Williams play, who said, in his opening speech:

I have tricks in my pocket — I have things up my sleeve — but I am the opposite of the stage magician. He gives you illusion, that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth, in the pleasant disguise of illusion.

Reading back through this gives me the disturbing feeling that I seem to be saying that I didn’t get what I should have gotten out of this relationship. But if I expected to get more than I gave, then I’m fooling somebody – about something.

I think the two of us got on so well at least partly because we gave what we could. And we were gentle with each other.

Today

Today, I find that I feel the need for a partner. And I don’t feel a lot of partner there.

There have been moments when I panicked because Carl wasn’t there – not there in the sense that he’d just shut down. He’d gone back to bed, because he couldn’t deal with what was going on. At the time, I saw the problem as depression. Now, I wonder about that assessment.

After two or three of those panic episodes, I got numbed to the terror. The horror became part of the landscape. And if I have a tool or resource that could change that panorama, I haven’t figured it out yet.

It has occurred to me to imagine that this feeling I’m having could be at least a little bit similar to how my father felt, all those years ago. He was out there, in a post WWII world that could be stunningly unhelpful, and he had no support – no help at all. From parents, peers, partner, or progeny.

One element that’s maybe good in all of this is that I haven’t found myself getting angry. I think anger isn’t an unusual pattern. I get plenty scared – lots and lots – but not yet angry.

Carl

If I feel abandoned, how must Carl feel? I find that question relentlessly alarming – horrible – terrifying.

I see him get confused – get totally disoriented – in the simplest task. Until I step in, he stops completely – not knowing what to do next – not knowing what the question is – not even seeing that there’s a problem. I see distressingly and immeasurably more than that. And certainly there’s much that I haven’t seen.

Sometimes I wonder about this being a pathological process. Or could some part of it be the shocking speed and crushing complexity of life today. Some mornings, I go to heat my mug of oatmeal in the microwave, and halfway through the movement, I realize that my focus has drifted, and I’m reaching toward the refrigerator door. I’ve never put my mug in the fridge, and then moved on, oblivious to the reality that all is not quite correct. But occasionally I’m disturbed by my concern that something here isn’t entirely fair.

And so …

I may not be able to remedy our situation. I may not know how to ease my abandoned feeling.

But for Carl, I can make at least some difference. I can take as much care as I can, for as long as I can, that he feels loved, and touched, and needed – and I do need him – deeply. I will take this care as long as I am able to – or until that time when there is no longer a need for my care.

I hold him as often as I can. The shower is a wonderful place to be close – to embrace. And I seek other times and places that we can hold each other.

And even if I feel like I get “a blank response,” when I share with Carl what’s going on in our lives, my gut tells me powerfully that I need to continue to share with my friend – as much as I can – as often as I can. If I start to leave Carl out, I’m crossing the event horizon of a dreadful abyss. I would be cutting Carl out of life long before it’s unavoidable.

This would not help my friend. It wouldn’t do me any good either.