I have become a world-class flake since A passed, though I didn’t notice it until I’d healed enough to begin to feel like I had choices beyond feeling like I was bleeding to death. At first, I didn’t do things because survival was about all I could handle, but the habits of mind have stuck around even as the pain has become less acute.
What’s particularly ironic about this development is that I hate flakiness. And yet e-mails pile up in my inbox, and I read them, and then just glance at them each time I check my mail after that. I answer them eventually, but “eventually” can be a really long time in some cases. I’m not sure what I’m waiting for. I guess I’m waiting to care. It’s not that I don’t care about the people whose e-mails I’m not answering; it’s that I don’t seem to care about the e-mailing, which is further ironic, because e-mails from friends always make me feel better about life, but you have to write ‘em to get ‘em. Some of them require a decision from me, like one sitting there now asking me if I want to play a gig at a new coffee house. I don’t know; I don’t want to make decisions, so there it sits. I don’t get back to people on the phone, either, not even my folks. I don’t get the bills paid on time, though I’m aware that they need to get done. I’m aware of all of it, but I ignore the doing of it. “Later,” I tell myself. Always later. Nothing seems very urgent these days.
At work I have next to zero concentration. I don’t much like my job or where I work, but they pay me well, so I stay put. I didn’t like my job when A was alive, either, and regularly regaled him with stories of the sometimes unbelievable experiences of cubicle life and coworkers that he was missing out on in his one-man shop. He frequently accused me of making it up. And he would keep me amused during the day by sending e-mails, and we’d chat at lunch and the end of the day, too. Since he left, though, my job, something I didn’t really care a lot about in the first place, has sunk further in status, however impossible that may have seemed to me before. I skate by because I’m very efficient when I do manage to focus for a little while, and I get enough done that it’s not, as far as I know, noticed. But I know exactly how much time my mind is somewhere else and it astonishes even me. It’s not even focused constantly on him or my grief. It’s just anywhere but here.
I remember A telling me that as his marriage was ending and he was dealing with what that all meant, things fell apart for him at work, which is not good when you are the entire company. It was hard for him to focus on the job when his life was falling apart. He complained more than once about himself to me, how he still hadn’t gotten back on track after 5 years, back in a “go get ‘em” mode at work, and the lack of focus and efficiency cost him. And it made sense to me when he told me, but I didn’t really understand until now. I think now I know exactly what he was feeling. You see what you’re doing (or not doing), and the worst of the trauma has passed, and yet the inertia seems impossible to overcome. Oddly, even this makes me feel closer to him, as I personally understand something more about him that I just understood sympathetically before. But it’s probably not any better for me as he felt it was for him.
I’ve become a recluse, too. I like my house. All my stuff is there, and I’ve always been okay with my own company, but since A died, I turn down invitations regularly because I just don’t feel like it. It’s not that I wouldn’t enjoy it, or that I don’t think it’d be good for me. I just don’t think it would be so good that it’d be worth leaving the house for. I wonder how much of it is just me enjoying being home, and how much of it is me hiding out. I don’t honestly know.
Lately, I’ve been feeling compelled to stop trying. Not giving up, but surrendering to the reality that I am not in control here, and living life as it comes to me, without expectation or even hope, which is a nice way of saying “expectation.” The more I try to figure things out, the more I spin my wheels, so I have to question the wisdom of even trying. Maybe living in this world long enough forces you to either be Zen or insane. I couldn’t tell you which I am becoming. Maybe I’ll think about that.
Later.
