False hope.
“My cousin’s best friend’s sister was able to cure her diabetes with the canary seed milk diet.”
“The husband of a co-worker went to a 3-month meditation retreat with no speaking allowed and he came back without anxiety or depression ever again.”
Oh, those false hopes and cures for things that cannot possibly be cured in this day and age. Correcting people and reassuring them that, yes, you have done everything you know to amend your health situation.
When people find out that your long-term relationship has come to an abrupt halt, the usual reaction has an old familiar feeling.
“Well, you two did have a rough 2010 with all your medical issues. Maybe you just needed a break from each other after all that stress.”
Oh, how I wish that were true, that all of the smaller problems that we encountered erupted in the face of crisis. That we would eventually both miss each other terribly and realize our errors in parting ways.
Far from the truth.
I wish I could say I was coming back to our house every weeknight excited to tell him what I learned at the new job that day. Nope, I can only tell the cat about the day’s events.
I wish I could say he was telling me his frustrations with his job at the dinner table every night. Instead I only gather a little of them from the limited portion of the online world we share.
I wish I could say we were close again, intimate again. No, the closest we get is through e-mail about little household administrative tasks instead of sharing our deepest thoughts with each other next to each other in bed.
I wish I could say I was moving back to the space we shared for so long. I am moving again soon, just to a bigger and better place than the one in which I have been living the past few months.
In spite of all our hisses at each other in this transition period, it is just hard to reconcile not being with him like I had been day in and day out for years.
The last thing I need is someone giving me false hope on which to hang, even if I am fairly certain deep down what the truth really is.
Posted on June 17, 2011, in Domestic Life. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
Sometimes folks treat the end of relationships — especially longer-time ones — they way they react to chronic illness/chronic pain. They struggle to say something positive, something reassuring, and end up tripping all over themselves. Even folks who have/are experiencing what you are sometimes can’t find the “right” words to say.
The end of any relationship (with a partner, good health, a friend, a career) means there is a greiving period (even the 5 stages of grief can apply without there being an actual “death.”) and everyone deals with the grief differently.
I know it’s annoying when folks try to be “helpful,” or think they know the solution to your issues (health, relationships, etc.). For some folks, there are no miracle cures, quick fixes, easy paths; if this were the case, I wouldn’t have been battling my chronic demons all these years.
I hope your new space (and the new job) provide you with some things to smile about during this period of readjustment. And, the cats, of course!
Oh Rachel, your words speak volumes.