CLient U20.ND18 - Session 4

(Beep. Music fades in)

I knew sadness was going to be the worst part about this… whole thing. Largely because it’s something I haven’t quite learned how to cope with myself. I carry a great sadness on my shoulders. And I think, in many ways, this sadness is what draws me to the sadness other people carry in their hearts. And maybe that’s how all of this has happened. 

Who knows? But the sadness and powerlessness of it all really hit me this week. Last week too. But this week especially.

 When I’m lying in bed, sometimes I just want to roll over and scream into whatever weird decorative pillow has ended up on my side of the bed. You see, my girlfriend is both a very mobile sleeper and someone who likes decorative pillows, so… I never know what I’m exactly I’m going to get, but it’s always something… to scream into, I guess. But that screaming is not going to help. I’ll do it, and at the end, I’ll still want to scream. Always. It would just wake up my girlfriend. And I don’t think she’s much better off than I am. But it is in her nature to hide it better. So she’ll need her rest.

I’ve been thinking about you a lot. Because I too want better. Not normal and not this bizarre half-way normal that we’ve ended up with that keeps getting worse in some ways and super worse in others. I can’t tell if we’re preemptively grieving the loss of those around us who will be taken or if we’re grieving a normal that… well, should never happen again. How can anyone come back from this feeling one hundred percent like they did. How can anyone come back from seeing the types of people their friends and family truly are in a crisis.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

I never mention my girlfriend’s father, you know, because in many ways, he doesn’t matter to her. Or that’s what she told me when I asked why I had never met him. 

“Just assume he’s dead,” she told me once. “As far as you’re concerned, he might as well be.”

And this was coming from someone who somewhat dances around the tragedies of my life. Someone who doesn’t take things lightly and who doesn’t weaponize scars. But she also doesn’t shy away from facts. Not with me. So when she said that, I knew I did not need examples. But now, I have them in so many words.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

You see, he’s dead to me but not to her. And so, she has a front row seat to the kind of person he is. Because it’s a trainwreck she can’t turn away from. And more than that, her parents divorced when she was young, and she went to live with her mother. And now, she tells me, it’s like she has a deficit in just physically seeing her father. He’s not worth it, but the impulse to physically see him remains. And now that she has a chance to see him, digitally, she has succumbed to this overwhelming urge to see him. It refuses to be ignored. 

Now she looks. At what must be the worst time to see him for someone who wanted to care about him. 

As we lay in bed together as I try to comfort her as she’s always done for me. Sometimes, though, it’s better to have a blank space in your life instead of a person. An empty void doesn’t let you down, not like this.

If you don’t know how you can go back, how you can see some of your friends again, I can’t tell you how to do it. It’s an answer I don’t have. I can’t tell you how to reconcile their actions with who you thought they were or what they needed to be, maybe who they even pretended to be. But I feel your disappointment, and it’s not the sort of thing that’s easy to make peace with. 

People let you down. Fact. But that doesn’t make it okay. And that doesn’t make it hurt any less. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

But they’ve made their choices. And now you have to make yours now. And just as theirs had consequences, so do yours. You will feel them more than anyone else will. And in some ways, you think that is fair. You like the idea of actions being self-contained in bubbles. Much like a quarantine. And hey, I get it, I was kind of… somewhat excited for this in the beginning. Not the virus, no, but the response. The prevention. As I saw it, it was a two-for-one. It was safety. It was helping my neighbor. And well, at first, I mean, I hated my commute, and I wanted some sort of break. But now I see that this was never really a break. This was a fight on a different terrain. And now you can look over to the next trench and see other people who aren’t doing their part. And so, this battle will keep marching on. It marches on and here we are, taking stock of the casualties.

Not just the literal casualties. But also the perceptions of the people around us that we held so close to our hearts. For some of us, those are gone too, and they are lost in a much similar way. We can never conjure up those illusions again, can we?

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

Normalcy was comforting, wasn’t it? Normalcy might have been an illusion, but it was one that got us through the everyday. When the everyday might have been hard and otherwise unbearable, that consistency was an anchor that could get us through the storm. We might have something that vaguely resembles that normal, but it isn’t the same, and once you see how the magic trick works, you can’t be in awe of it anymore. You can’t enjoy the show the same way.

But if it’s truly a marvel of engineering, you’ll have that. You’ll accept that. It’s still enjoyable but in a different way. But this… They who you once enthusiastically called your friends, are not like that. They are as they are: a magic trick that does not stand against the test of scrutiny or against a revelation.

And it was a brutal realization, was it not? You always thought it was fine that you were the parent of the group, that they depended on you. You never stopped to question how much dependence there really was. Or what it might mean. It all just seemed to come together. You liked helping. You liked being useful. It made you feel secure, in some ways. They needed you. You needed them. And everyone was helping everyone else and it was all nice and serene. But that’s gone now, isn’t it? Now you wonder if they ever stopped to think about you at all? Certainly not people like you. People who need the protection right now.

I can’t answer that question, but you don’t need me to. I can only tell you that across this distance, I am here for you. I am here as you grieve and feel this sadness. I feel it with you. From my heart to yours, Dear Child. Take a deep breath. And weep. Each tear is yours to cast aside. There will be a time for the rain to end, but it is not right now. 

Take a breath. You’ll find your way. I promise.

(Music fades out. Beep)

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?