How
does it get like this?
20 March, 2000
How does it get like this? Four days out from your 38th birthday and you tell your wife in bed after midnight, after another little fight, that you really don't seem to have much to look forward to and you can't remember the last time you were truly happy.
And yes, maybe you're melodramatic and self-pitying, but there still seems, a lot of the time, to be this invisible cloak draped over you that deadens the world and the joys within it, leaving you heavy and listless and tired all of the time.
How does it get to be that you feel so distant from someone you love, someone you've slept next to thousands of times and made love to and borne a child together? How can it be that hate seems to be what both of you feel sometimes?
That's not a way to live, and it's not right to see each day as a drawn out string of moments that you're only semi-connected with, waiting for Godot knows what.
Deb said, "it's like you're continually making payoffs. Spend some time with Matthew, and you'll have some time to yourself. Do something with the two of us and maybe you can escape to the computer."
And I worry that I don't find joy anymore. Things are shades of grey — not always bad, but always muted, always a little distanced.
Deb says, "and we used to have dreams, and do things together — around the house, in the garden. We made plans Mikey."
I keep putting things off. When we've got more money. When I'm not so tired. When Matthew's asleep. When I've read the newspaper. When, when, when … Just put it aside for a minute, hunch down in your cloak, shut down. It'll go away given time.
I get scared sometimes that this is it. That I have no fight left to live the way I always thought I wanted. The cloak deadens the world so I don't feel connected with it, just a days of chores to get through before sleep.
"You're depressed Mikey", says Deb, "you need to talk to someone." How can that be? Why would I be depressed?
Some things are better. And some things are wonderful. But not enough. And I want life to be wonderful, not just a few things in it.
Why do I accept having this cloak on me?