Impersonal Pieces of Data

I should call more often.  It's the right thing to do, the loving thing to do. And certainly, I often intend to, and never explicitly decide not to.  But I know in the back of the mind how I'll feel when I hear her broken voice, her complaints of pain. How someone else's suffering can hurt more than anything you experience yourself if you love that person enough.  And if anything is certain, it is that I love her.

So I find myself at the end of the day realizing I forgot to call, long after it's too late and she won't have the strength to talk.  Not an intentional oversight, of course.  Time just got away from me. That's what I tell myself to feel better, but it doesn't work.  I feel weak and cowardly, awash in self-loathing.

So I build a scaffolding of schedule to hold myself to, so there's no excuses, no way to hide from such minimal duty.  These are the days I will call, and that's the way it is.  I take a deep breath before I pick up the phone, prepared to feel the ache of powerlessness. I budget time after each call to recover, ashamed to require such a luxury when I'm not the bedridden one.

There are visits, of course. But I won't talk of these as some things are too personal and private to share. Though I will admit the worst parts of those visits replay in my mind, the machinations of a guilty conscience that exerts itself during some happy moments.  The human mind compartmentalizes to help us cope and continue to exist while bad things are happening, but it also holds a tormenting presence that finds such mental trickery reprehensible.  It's a house divided against itself.

My wife, supportive and loving, wants to help me but struggles with how matter-of-factly I deal with things.  "I feel depressed," I will tell her with same tone I'd use to remark on the weather.  Whatever storms of feeling are below the surface, they manifest themselves as impersonal pieces of data.  As someone who wears her heart on her sleeve, she doesn't know how to help when I process my emotions in this way, communicating them like an impartial spectator recounting an event on the news*.

I'm saying all this because I don't want to say any of it, and forcing myself  to talk about these feelings is (probably) a healthy thing to do, even if it makes me feel silly and exposed. There has to be some strength in admitting weakness, even if it doesn't feel that way, and strength is exactly what I need right now.

* I've written about some of the more difficult aspects of my childhood that may be part of the reason for this.