The Second Child - Session 1

(Beep. Music fades in)

That box of your personal belongings felt a lot heavier than you were expecting, right? And I can follow your logic on this easily. You hadn’t brought too much into your office from home. You weren’t big for clutter at your workstation, which was coded language for “I want to make sure I could make a quick getaway if or when the time comes. And then the time came, but the getaway was not so quick despite your best efforts.

The thing is: the secret ingredient in all of that is context. I know that. You know that. You choose to make a job transition around the holidays, and I can’t tell you if that was a good idea or not. I can tell you why your brother chucked his phone at the wall the other day when you came by. That’s was me. He can blame exhaustion from the baby all he wants, and there’s probably some truth in that. But I was the spark that blew the powder keg. 

Sorry not sorry. I can’t really control anyone’s reactions, you know?

And to be clear, I’m not coming to you as the person who unintentionally antagonized your brother. I didn’t mean to kick him while he was down. It just seemed unavoidable. Just because I knew that was going to happen doesn’t mean I was okay with it. Far from it. I know how much of a nightmare losing your father was. And I know it’s not a consistent nightmare, either, even in the first few months. I know there are okay days and bad days, even and especially in the beginning when you’re only expecting to have bad days. 

Sometimes I think of the okay days as more ‘pleasantly numb’ than okay. It’s not ‘pleasant’ in the classic sense, but you’re holding on better than you normally do. Something in your body has just hit the brakes on the worst of it, and you can just start to relax, recover a bit, catch up on things. There’s a lot of really useful fail safes in the human body like that. And we should probably trust it more. 

Not that I’m one to talk about that. I don’t trust my body ever. Well, it’s mostly just the sleeping thing. Personally, I’ve just got a lot of other stuff going on when I’m asleep, and it’s not an easy thing to deal with. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

Oh but that wasn’t a slight against you, really. I’m actually looking forward to talking about you. I mean, to you. “At you” is probably the most accurate, all things considered. 

I’m not anyone you know, by the way. Which actually makes this worse, right? Now the creep-factor has just shot through the roof because there are some things that can’t be guessed, right? Like the box you carried when you left the office and its perceived weight. You had mentioned it to a few friends, so someone close to you might know and might even feel comfortable enough to repeat it even if you couldn’t recall saying it to them. But a stranger, on the other hand. Yeah that’s a wholly different thing. There’ll be other details like that during our time together. I’ll mention things that someone close to you would know but as someone who is not close to you, how could I know? That’s not an easy question for me to answer.

(Sigh) If I had to guess, it goes back to your father’s funeral. It was on one of the last good days of fall, I think. You know what I’m talking about, right? I don’t mean to be so callous, but you get my point. It came late enough in the season that everyone could see that the end of said season was in sight. So I knew I wasn’t going to be able to enjoy the outdoors much longer and decided to take my break outside. Maybe we passed each other and just don’t remember it. I have a really unremarkable face so no worries, but…  But I was sitting across the street from the church with absolutely no thought as to what might have been happening inside. 

I saw you all leave the church. That’s the only connection we have, but I guess it’s enough.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

Life is incredibly unpredictable, I have to say. And I’m not even saying that about the dreams or the secret fail-safes in the human body. I’m not talking about the suddenness of a not entirely sudden death. Or how a box is supposed to feel versus how it actually does as you walk out of the door of a terrible job for the last time. I mean, everything. There’s an element to all of it that’s just about adapting to things without fully knowing what it means to adapt. It’s about figuring out what to say when your mind is just a storm of words and also pictures that you then have to translate into words. It’s about the moments you have in your head that will never come to pass. And then the ones that did that, I don’t know, that you don’t entirely like, I guess.

Now, I’m just spit-balling here. I know you’re tired, so I don’t want to dump too much on you. But now I’ve got this thought in our heads, and I’ll just walk it to the end of the road if you don’t mind. But you know how I literally just said, we’ve got to adapt without knowing how to adapt. Well, there’s more to it than that. Everything is about change, if you think about it. And consistency is just the absence of change, so there’s that objection dealt with right there. 

Changing careers is a part of that. Or not careers, sorry. My bad. You’re staying in the same industry. You are just one of the many who have now decided to chase greener pastures or greener salaries, I say in an attempt to make a joke about a pay increase. 

And here’s where you expect me to point out that you’re the one taking this the best, right? You’re the child that doesn’t need to be worried about, again. You’re fine. Yes, it hurt to lose your father, but you’re fine. You say that to me as if I cannot see that you’ve put on this facade of being a creature without needs because you don’t know how to fix any of the other problems in your family right now, so not creating more just seems to be the only thing you could do. The bare minimum sort of thing, right? Yeah, I can see through it. Call me an oracle or just something who's been around the block before. This is not my first rodeo.

Because of that, I also know how pointless it would be for me to push back or try to convince you to try literally any other coping mechanism. You want to object and say that your problems are small, but much like that box, the context of it all makes it worse, makes it heavier. Yes, you’re on your way up. Yes, things are looking up for you. But we both know your emotions–which you do in fact have–are a lot more complex than that. If you can’t/won’t/shouldn’t/whatever go to your family, maybe you’ll listen to me. I just want to help. My tone isn’t great all the time, but I am trying to help. And I got you to lower your guard, didn’t I? Like I said, sometimes we have to adapt. We don’t always do it well in that, but I’m on a mission, so I’ve got that going for me.

I’ll let you get settled in before I begin my meddling, as your brother calls it. You’ll be fine until I loop back around. You’re well into that pleasantly numb stage. It isn’t great, but it is practical. For lack of a better word.  

(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?