The other night while unable to sleep, I composed an email as Dan snored. It was my best effort to get stuff out without feeling like I had thirty seconds to explain myself before he stomped away in a man-baby huff.
I don’t even feel like what I have to say is all that bad, but he is so avoidant of anything remotely touchy-feely these days. I mean, we’re all like that by nature to a certain extent, and it takes self-reflection to overcome the default of being protective and invulnerable. But his dissociation has been off the charts.
He didn’t mention the email or its contents so I asked bluntly, “Did you get the email I wrote last night?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I read it this morning.”
Folks, I don’t know what he thinks about any of it. That’s verbatim all he said. But I’ll give you my take, because that’s what I do here.
I feel like he has been blaming me for a very long time for expecting too much of him when he was the one expecting too much of himself. I was unfairly being punished, because he wasn’t willing to do a modicum of introspection.
Quite frankly, I am sympathetic to the ways bullshit societal messages get sewn into our security blankets. That doesn’t mean you can make me feel like shit without pushback, though.
I would try to thank Dan for his help, to show him he was appreciated, and he’d get grouchy. Eventually everything I asked for wore me down to the point asking made me panic. Which stuck me in freeze mode and worsened my disability. Which meant I had to ask for more help.
You see the problem?
I’d try to get him to say “no” when he needed a break. He’d get mad at me. I’d try to read his mind when he was brain tired, I’d get it wrong. I’d say something innocuous and he’d play devil’s advocate because he didn’t want to agree with me about anything.
I didn’t handle it in stride.
I was spinning my wheels. It was emotionally exhausting and not fucking helping me in any way to spend energy I didn’t have on something I had come to learn would be a pointless endeavor.
Anyway, I think I stemmed the blame-bleeding for the moment. Time will tell when and if we fully recover. What matters to me most as I write this post is that I said what I needed to. What he chooses is not my problem, and—at least for now—the silent hostility is gone. I feel like I can process emotional junk again.
That’s enough.
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