When my session finished out last night I had actually completed 11 pages instead of the 8 I was so pleased with when I posted. After writing I sat down with a Tobias Wolff collection and read a couple of stories to finish out my quiet time. As I left the hospital where I work I felt great. The night was clear and cool and I had a sense of accomplishment as I drove home with the window down.
Upon arrival I discovered that my wife was still up and working around the house. I tried to offer my assistance and then to make her a sandwich as she hadn't eaten that evening but I was met with cool detachment. There was no need for me. In fact, I felt like I was in the way a burden on her already busy and stressful schedule. There was no kiss hello, no welcoming hug, no question as to how the writing was going and so I went to make myself something to eat.
By the time my sandwich was finished I could feel my elation fleeing me like a riptide pulling away, farther and farther from the shores of my mind. In the vacuum, the empty space where I had once held joy was a cold silence, an emptiness that isolated me within myself. It was like the return of a familiar lover. I can make out the outline of this isolation, run my fingers along the cheekbone of its face as it gives a wan smile as greeting, a lover returned too soon but desperate for recognition.
And so I collapse a little and, I believe, for the first time in the months since I have been feeling this way. I pull a blanket up onto the couch and watch mindless television in silence. After a few moments she joins me but not to chat or discuss but simply takes a chair a fair distance away from me and sits with her hands in her lap.
Loneliness in the face of another is terrible. It eclipses any loneliness that is felt while truly isolated from the contact of others and I tremble under the weight of it, I don't know if I can bear the full mass of it though I try.
Finally, after a half hour of news reports, she speaks. "How was the writing tonight?"
"Fine," I say, not able to muster up a more committed response. I feel salt tears pressing for release but hold them back and my eyes itch from dryness.
"Did you get a lot done?"
"Yeah," I say and this time there is a little pleasure in the response, a small sign that there is truth to it.
"Are you okay?" she asks, finally allowing herself to admit that I am not myself.
"I don't feel good."
"Are you taking your vitamins?" she asks and I want to laugh at the question, at the sheer wrongness of her response.
"No," I say in a flat voice.
"What is it?"
"I just don't feel that good MENTALLY."
"Oh," she says, "is it school?"
"Yes, but it is everything."
"Is it me?"
"It's everything. I'm just not feeling that great about myself right now."
"Do you want to talk about it?" she asks and there is trepidation in her voice, a reluctance to open the door for me to speak freely.
"I don't know," I say, "we don't have the best track record of communicating stuff like this." I know she will take this personally but there is truth in it as well. She will take the things I say personally and I will have to coddle her, reassure her. There isn't much release in that for me. She leaves. She turns from me and goes to bed without pursuing the issue further.
I wanted her to press me for answers, to show an investment in my mental welfare, to want to help me but she left. She simply went to bed as if it were a regular Monday night. Like I said, it's terrible to feel isolated in the presence of company.
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