All that does seem rather
dark and foreboding, doesn’t it? How
could two people who had become so distant over so many years, happily—or even
bearably—cohabit under such draconian restrictions? It’s understandable that we would be
miserable…scratching at the walls, driving each other crazy, staging
spectacular verbal battles, playing tug-of-war over household responsibilities;
in general, just hating life.
I had geared up for a fight,
back in March, when I told him if he went to Portland, he should stay there for
the duration. For 26 years, the job has
been his #1 priority. It ALWAYS took
first place, over me, over our marriage, over our home; over “joint” endeavors
upon which we embarked with his full consent and commitment (or so I thought.)
Birthdays, anniversaries, holidays—any day or time that could be construed as
being personally important—were only celebrated to the extent that the job
would allow him to do so. When we lived
apart, he’d let it be known the job was his priority and would always get the
lion’s share of his time and energy, even when time or energy might be better
invested into his home and marriage.
When it came to “our” business ventures, his interest/involvement would
wax and wane erratically, depending on whether he was engaged and happy at the
job, or frustrated and bored with it.
The job was the constant
during all those years, all those ups and downs, all those attempts to break
out and make a life together. It was
at once his refuge and his purgatory. It
gave him something to cling to, and with both hands engaged in holding on to
it, he couldn’t reach for anything newer, or better, or more rewarding, or even
different.
As the years went by, I
learned that if I wanted a life, I had to get my own. In our younger days, we’d loved camping. We’d taken weekends in vacation rentals in
little tourist spots all over Oregon.
We’d invested countless hours and dollars remodeling every house we had
ever lived in. Then we bought the restaurant, and everything changed. Everything stopped. Eventually, the restaurant chewed us up and
spit us out. But we couldn’t get our old
life back.
He withdrew from me and
anything I had ever had anything to do with.
He hated camping. A succession of
travel trailers that I thought I couldn’t live without sat moldering in the
driveway. Getting him to take time off
so we could go on a long weekend was nearly impossible. He stopped caring about the house and the
yard. He’d come home from work, have
dinner, and then sit in front of the television until he went to bed. And all day Saturday and at least half of
Sunday, he spent on the couch in front of the tv. And I…well, I tried to get a life. I invested time in what was now MY small
business—which eventually led me to spending many hours in Eugene at the
building I had bought to house it. I drove hundreds of miles with my dog and my
camera. I took the trailers out for
solitary vacations. I walked and kept house and decorated for holidays and
escaped to Eugene by myself as often as I could. To say we grew apart would be like calling
the Grand Canyon a trickle through a ravine.
So, yes. I expected a struggle when I told him not to
come back if he drove up to Portland on March 17 of this year. After all we’d been through for a quarter of
a century—more than half our married life—over which his work had always taken
priority, I did not believe for one minute that even COVID-19 would able to loose
the chains that bound him to that job.
There was little doubt in my mind that he would go anyway, and I would
be left, as had become our habit, to get my own life. Only this time, THIS time, he might not come
back. It would be up to me to conquer the
debilitating anxiety, hold down the fort, maintain the house and the pets
and the yard, alone. I could do it. I would
do it. I didn’t intend to beg, or cry,
or threaten. If he made up his mind, he
would just be…gone. It’s not like we
weren’t mostly apart anyway.
But, to my utter
astonishment, he didn’t go. With hardly a peep of argument. It was hard for me to be properly
dumbfounded, lost as I was in my personal hell of runaway anxiety. I didn’t even consider how being together 24/7
was going to play out. All I really knew
was there was one less thing to be crazy worried about—he was not going to go
out in the world and bring the disease back to our home.
For the first two weeks of
our shared “social distancing,” I wouldn’t have been able to say how things
were working out between us if you asked.
I had fallen so far inside my own head that all my waking energy was
spent trying to keep myself from being completely swallowed up by that black
hole.
But as time went on, I
noticed that I wasn’t fighting quite so hard.
This was partly because we’d been home long enough to have outlasted the
incubation period if we had been
infected. But, more than that, it was because
I wasn’t battling alone. Life no longer
consisted only of me straining to create a satisfying solitary existence while
waging a lonely war against my anxiety, as it had been for most of the last
twenty years. Just having someone in the
house to shoulder some of the burden of everyday life—mowing the lawn, taking
out the trash, caring for the animals, planning grocery deliveries, working on
household projects—was a godsend. And
having another person consistently within shouting distance, someone with needs
and fears and challenges of his own, served as a life ring. It dragged me out of my own head and pulled
my attention to someone who was not me.
At some point, I noticed this,
and sat and thought about it for a bit.
And what I realized was that I was hunkered down, socially distancing
and sheltering in place with…my best
friend. After all the years of
see-sawing commitment; of almost getting close enough then pushing each other
away; of frustration and anger and hurt; we still liked each other. I suppose if that basic fact were not true—if
we were not on some level best friends through everything—we would not still be
together at all.
I told someone a couple of
weeks ago that this “difficult” time we’re living through has actually given me
the opportunity to tend my relationship with my husband, with whom I have “really
needed to reconnect.” During the days,
he “works” from home, on what is left of his work, and I fuss around with house
and/or yard projects. In the afternoons,
we work on projects together, or go for drives, do online shopping, or do our
little one-mile “walk-at-home” workouts together. In the evenings, we settle in and binge-watch
several episodes of our favorite reruns on tv.
One night a week, we declare “no tv night,” and after dinner, we play
cribbage or Racko until bed time. At the end of every evening, I fill up the
kitchen sink and we do the day’s dishes together (our “new” house came without
a dishwasher. But who needs one?)
We’re so comfortable in our
isolation, that I almost feel guilty to be so blessed, when so many others are
suffering so much pain and loss during this dark time.
In the mornings, when I go
outside to feed the outside animal life and drink my coffee, I salute the four
compass points and honor the Spirits of East, South, West and North from whom I
have sought guidance for years. And I
make it a point to express to each Spirit that I am grateful, SO grateful for
the blessings and the guidance that have been so freely given to me and my
household during these hard times.
