survival mode

August. The season of T’s all over the world going on holidays. The season of clients having meltdowns because their T’s are going on holidays. For me, it was no different. T went on holiday. But unlike previous ones I didn’t have a meltdown–at least not while he was gone. Now that he’s back it’s a different story.

Do you think it’s possible to hold your breath for an entire week? I’m wondering if that’s what happened here. Don’t get me wrong, I hate when he goes on holiday–like how dare he have a life when mine is falling completely to shit! Can I get an Amen?

For the first time in, well, forever really, I didn’t feel angry at him for leaving me. I didn’t panic. I didn’t cry. I didn’t stomp my feet, tell him it wasn’t fair and wonder if he’d be too far away. Yes, I still wondered if he would ever come back. Yes, I still had those thoughts cross my mind that he’d enjoy his time off (a.k.a. his time away from me) and that he’d decide he’d finally go and retire and that would be that. But it was far different than normal.

He’d gladly offered to carve out some time for me to have telephone chats, said I could text or email whenever I needed to and basically told me he’d be there for whatever I needed. He never once wavered on that offer. I just couldn’t do it. It felt so unfair to ask that of him after what we’ve been dealing with.

Things have been quite awful for months. He’s been there through it all and I know it hasn’t been fun. For me or him. He had told me his son and daughter were coming to visit for the week and while I know he didn’t tell me to make me feel bad, I wanted to give him that space. It just felt like the right thing to do. Somewhere in the back of my mind, something was telling me that if I didn’t give him that, he would break and we would be left picking up the shattered pieces.

For 7 days I had the feeling like I needed something but didn’t want to ask for it because it felt like a bad idea or ‘too much‘. So instead I painfully fought through the panic and told myself that if I could last a certain number of days without doing anything drastic then maybe, just maybe, I’d be–not great–but still breathing.

He said he’d be back yesterday but I waited all day to reach out to him. Last evening, I cracked and sent a text. He told me he’d been thinking about me and wondered how I was. Why does it always feel so weird when he says that? It’s like part of my brain cannot even fathom why he would ever be thinking about me and how I am. I told him a bit about how the time has been and he told me that I didn’t have to be alone or merely survive just because he was on holiday…uggggh

I’m glad he’s back.Today for some reason life feels really hard and a small part of me wishes I’d never sent that text.

Perhaps it would have been easier to hold my breath a few more days. Sometimes survival mode is all we have. I’m fairly certain that’s where I’ve been for the last 4 decades.