Client Grief - Session 2

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Hey, quick pre-show announcement. The Oracle of Dusk Patreon has been effectively relaunched or at least restructured. Bonus content now has a schedule, and if you want a special producer credit, there’s a tier for that too. The link is in the description. 

Okay, let’s get into the actual episode.

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You listened to your last recording a few times, did you not? You played it over and over again, and you said it was to support me and all the hard work I do, but a download is a download. And that’s how numbers are tracked in podcasting. Repeated plays off a single file don’t do much. And that’s okay. You didn’t know that. It also wasn’t your point. You didn’t relisten to help me. You actually don’t care if you do. You don’t care about me. And fair enough, you’re under no obligation to. Let’s just be honest with each other. 

You listened to your last recording a few times, you don’t deny that. But it was just to fill space, you said. You don’t like silence. And there’s a lot of silence in your home lately. Your partner is there beside you, but the two of you are struggling to speak. Neither of you know what to say. You have words on your tongues, but you hold them in place. Until when, you wonder. But you don’t say that either.

“I never liked silence,” you want to tell me. You almost say that to her when she points out that you have been wearing your headphones so much more often than you normally do. But you don’t say that. You don’t want to acknowledge the silence. 

You listened to your last recording a few times, you will admit. But you won’t admit it’s because you liked the acknowledgment. You liked that someone admitted to that which you cannot admit to yourself. You liked that it made you feel alone. 

“I’m lonely,” you whisper to yourself, testing out the word. But it doesn’t fit, you are quick to say, ignoring however it is you may have actually felt. 

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“No,” you want to say. “I’m fine.”

You’ve gotten a lot of practice with those words. You say them often. To your partner especially. And when you say it, you can tell that she doesn’t believe you. She’s on the verge of pushing back or asking you for more. But she doesn’t. And for that, you’re relieved because you want to deal with this privately, right? You want to grieve, privately.

“No,” you want to say. You want to be sad privately. It’s not grief. You aren’t grieving. You are just sad. You are frustrated, you might admit. You did put a lot of work into that proposal, into the ring, into the details. You wrote out a beautiful speech, laying out your love and devotion to her. And you have to wonder if she heard any of it. 

That’s frustrating, you admit. But you won’t interrogate the thought. You won’t let yourself. Because you are afraid of the consequences. You are afraid of what will be revealed about yourself if you think about that frustration.

Because frustration hits at some sort of perceived “going without.” Not really a deprivation, you want to clarify, because that speaks to a sort of need that you don’t think you have or have any claim to. 

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You aren’t owed love, you believe. Rightfully. No one is owed such a thing. It’s a gift. The best kind of gift. You weren’t owed a marriage or romance. You thought those were also gifts, just gifts of a different sort. They were added blessings, toppings to an ice cream or sides to an amazing dinner. You aren’t good at metaphors. But even if they sounded off to the ear, they felt right to the heart. Except, well, those things are nourishing. In different ways. Dessert can speak to the body just as much as dinner does, however, and dinner can nourish the soul in the same way a favorite dessert can.

And when you put it that way, you think. When the word nourishment enters the room, things start to fall in a different way. Because no, you aren’t owed anything, but the entire issue of ‘need’ is infinitely more complex than we’ve been taught. 

You don’t need romance. But you need security and comfort. You need some sort of companionship. A friendly hand to hold. Someone to hear you. You need validation and correction. You need so many of the things romance will provide. It doesn’t necessarily have to come from that. But you had selected that venue, that realm, to be the one that tends to you. Just as you tended to it.

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“But it was just a dream,” you said to me, to my voice while you listened back to your first session. And your word choice was deliberate, pointed, and meant to be dismissive. You pick your word choice to describe a series of images playing out in your head when you sleep, insinuating that realm is lesser, is nothing, is worth dismissing, though it is the one through which I learn what it is I learn about you and all my other clients. 

“No offense,” you whispered. And none taken. I just mean to say that a dream can have value. No matter the kind. And its loss can be felt. So why are you still trying to pretend otherwise? No one else will entertain this illusion. No one else will deny what we see. It’s just you. Alone. In silence. The problem compounds.

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The Oracle of Dusk is a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. It was written, edited, produced, and performed by MJ Bailey. And if you like the show, tell friends about it or the quasi-friends that are still on your social media feeds because social norms evolved before words did, am I right?