Vicissitudes

Today, I am sad. Lonely. He is withholding something, I believe it is medical news that he doesn’t feel ready or able or willing to share and I have a lot of emotions around that. Mostly I feel abandoned, because isn’t this supposed to be a partnership? Forty years this year. So how do you just shut me out like that. Refuse to tell. Do your passive aggressive cave thing, carve out the no-go territory and then act like everything else is just fine. It’s not. I’m all twisted up and tumbling down a dark hole. Can’t take a full breath. I guess I’m scared and angry too. Scared I’ll lose him to whatever he's not saying. Angry he’s leaving me at the mercy of my most dire imaginings. I imagine he’s trying to manage his own feelings and isn’t ready to have to manage mine too. So I’m going along. Acting as if things are normal so as not to escalate. Because what’s the point of blowing up the whole dolly house, which I sort of already did this morning before we managed this afternoon (after his doctor’s appointment about which he shared nothing) to regroup and repair. I carry on and I wait. Holding myself in. Almost casually sharing news of about a president melting down over a general refusing to give him the nuclear codes. In this moment the possible end of the world seems distant and hypothetical. Is he going to be ok? feels much more pressing. Marriage can be hard y’all. 

(Might delete later.)

This being social

I woke thinking of all the social interactions I have ahead of me today, starting with my second to last session with my lovely PT person, as I have apparently met the markers, turns out I am a tad too determined to do what is asked of me and I powered through. After that I am to meet up with my neighbor Jane to walk in the gardens, just a pleasant stroll with my friend to enjoy the cotton candy blossoms arriving on our trees. Then my childhood friend Alison, who lived with us for a few years when we were growing up, and with whom I now sing in choir (except I'm not there this term because of my recent surgery), is stopping by after rehersal to give me my birth certificate, which my brother asked her to bring to me from Jamaica when she was there recently, for Easter. If you followed that sentence, good for you. I'm too lazy to go back and fix it. After Alison and I visit, I'm supposed to sit on a bench at sunset with my other friend Lisa, who's recovering from dental surgery, and who I haven't seen since before my surgery, though she left flowers at my door twice during my recovery, bless her. And finally at 7:30 tonight I'm due to attend the monthly meeting of our co-op's Tenant Committee, of which I am a member along with several of my fellow co-operators. In between I will get in a bit of work, maybe. I have already been up early, editing, and the weather is gorgeous out, so the days of taking my laptop downstairs and working in the courtyard under trees and sky are finally here. Yesterday I sat at an outdoor table and formatted blind endnotes for the manuscript I finished last fall, which is at the publisher, working it's way through the many-months-long book-birthing process. 

Anyway, I woke up thinking of all the social engagements that would be a part of this day and I thought that maybe I would put on make up, make an effort to help out my haircut, but by the time I was showered and dressed, that idea had run its course and I had settled for clean and neat. Earrings and a necklace will have to serve as proof that I tried. My hair is growing in a bit, though, and the color, which had seemed way too dark when I left the salon, now seems okay. It may not actually be a bad cut, it may just need a few weeks to come together. Maybe. Here I am in my daughter's back yard last Friday. My cousins from Orlando spent last week with us, and my girl and her husband had us all over for a cook-out to celebrate three recent family birthdays, except it was a little too soon for cook-out season, definitely still too cold, so we all huddled inside coats and sweaters and soon escaped inside. But just being together for a few hours in this mad surreal world, was soul restoring.