I don’t always like the way you do things or how you treat me, and I want us to talk with candor about our feelings.
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(I come to this writing task like a man who faces a machinery he might lose a finger to, like a kosher butcher who makes her prayers to God with fear and trembling, afraid they might be answered.)
Last night I went to bed bruised and blue, as I have for several days.
I perceive now that I spoke sharply to my lover in a way that made her ambivalent about coming to bed with me, much less being tender with me, something I wanted so deeply I was afraid to ask for it.
So, here it is. I am a vulnerable man in my fifties, surrounded and permeated by loss…
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I knew that my testiness and agitation, my ragged lack of patience, was connected somehow with an angry tumultuous conversation I had with my best friend yesterday, but I could not untangle my feelings from my reactions. They each withdrew from me a bit, friend and wife, wounded by my raging animus.
So I went to bed alone. At the door of sleep I floated an inchoate question: What is my path forward or backward, where are the markers, what restless spirit animates and endangers me?
The image which built itself piece by piece from that moment until it woke me at 3AM was whole and stark and piercing: my friend Ruffin’s body broken on the rocks under his tall house and not found for hours, pelted at by rain and wind.
My dream body caught its breath and understood.
Waking, I released the tears which had threatened to drown me whole.
So, here it is. I am a vulnerable man in my fifties, surrounded and permeated by loss (personal- ecological-political), not so much afraid of my own death as I am of my frailty, of the inevitable demise of the people I love, and of who I will be without them.
To the most important people in my life: This does not take you off the hook of my hard love.
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In this case, I wanted my beloveds to be present so deeply as a hedge against brother death that I tested them (my “testiness”) with a sharper regard to see if they bled, to assure myself that they were not phantoms, that I would find them warm and connected to me in the sympathetic restless light of morning .
This is not unfamiliar to me. I know I can react this way to precipitous events, where I literally feel myself out over a chasm of change, of possibility, of a deep and necessary regret. This has been a year of so many funerals.
I want to solidify in the deepest possible way what is real in my life, but I don’t have the right to fearfully rattle the cages of my relationships and frighten the people I love. I step back consciously from that precipice, set about repairing the bridge, commit to a generous daily life of support and engagement.
Life is short. Engage with me.
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To the most important people in my life: This does not take you off the hook of my hard love. I have apologies to extract as well as give, conflicts to resolve in the context of relationship-building. I don’t always like the way you do things or how you treat me, and I want us to talk with candor about our feelings. I promise to listen, and to be tender.
One of the legacies of death’s corona is an urgency to talk about difficult issues, an impatience with the surface of things, a courage to dive into dark waters. I’m choosing to accept that gift. Life is short. Engage with me.
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Photo: Getty Images
- gary phillips
I don’t understand the setting or the goals of the article.
RE: Last night I went to bed bruised and blue, as I have for several days.
Is this metaphorical or literal? If literal, is it from a disease maybe, or from something emotionally worse like a beating? Maybe from your partner?
I understand the going asleep alone. Even with my wife next to me I often felt alone.