A Need for Doing

The difference between me and her is that even when I can do nothing, I do something. The mind is an undiscovered country. I have read Frankl and I believe in his words. I cannot control my outer world, but my inner world is always mine. It is moments like this when I wonder what she sees when she closes her eyes. When I wonder if she has only regret and emptiness. Take me tomorrow. I feel good about my life. But she regrets the husband she chose, the career she chose, and sometimes, it feels like she regrets the daughter she has.

 But I am who I am.

The parts of me that need to change will change as they need to, and I resent her attempts to do it for/to me. There is a hidden rift between us. A gulf of fantasy and willing misperception. She does not accept who I am—and since that acceptance is really all I’ve ever wanted from her, we are still exactly where we have been all of my life: smiling for the picture and playing at happy family. I am a chameleon and I can fit into her life and live her paradigm with her…but at what cost? Clearly getting lost in that fantasy doesn’t make it real.

Don’t misunderstand.

I love her. I will always love her. And I forgive her in the same breath as I curse her. But that doesn’t make this moment any easier than the one before it or the one coming after it.

Is it selfish? That I want to go home, that I don’t want to be here anymore? Yes. And that’s why I’ve chosen to stay. But that doesn’t ultimately help matters.

And I don’t know what to ask her for. Or rather, I do but know asking won’t make things better either.

Take your pain medication so I don’t have to watch you make yourself suffer. Don’t criticize me or deal back-handed compliments and then act hurt when called out on them. Don’t speak ill of my father (he’s your husband, but he’s my blood) when in my presence. Don’t ask me to make the impossible happen and don’t get angry with me when I fail to do so. Don’t lie about me to the nurse when I’m sitting right there with you. Stop worrying so much about things that don’t matter.

But I can’t ask for it. For any of it. Because if she gives that up, she has nothing left but to sit and stare at the clouds outside the window and wait for death.

And the longer it takes the worse she is.

So we’re both in this prison.

If I stay and sit with her and look toward that western horizon, tomorrow is gone for me. When I sit at my work and slip into thinking about tomorrow, I am abandoning her, in a way—and she has an uncanny sense for when I’m doing it and never fails to interrupt.

The irony is that I end up sitting at the desk in the living room by myself watching TV and beading, which is exactly what I would probably be doing back at my apartment. But there is a world of difference between doing it because I want to and doing it because I feel like I have no other option. I can’t leave. And that’s the only difference between solitude and isolation.

But there has to be something…remember? I can do nothing about any of this, but I’ll be damned if I sit here without doing something. I fully intend to take action even if it’s an action taken only in my mind. I simply haven’t figured out exactly what.

Yet.