Strength
I wish for it. Mostly in vain.
I am not as strong as I thought.
I have been stoic for most of my life. I’m an analyst by nature and by preference. By keeping my emotions at arms length I’m often the one who sees what others cannot, when anger or fear or grief spoils objectivity.
I’ve stepped in ably at work when my boss committed suicide. I’ve lost friends, my friends have lost relatives, and I’ve been the anchor, the friend that moored them in an hour of emotional need. I lost my favorite grandmother and my three other grandparents and two uncles and an aunt and cousins taken early too. I think I largely kept my emotional composure throughout them all.
Physical discomfort doesn’t intimidate me; I have run marathons and completed an Ironman triathlon. DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) is an old and cantankerous acquaintance, as are all manner of muscle strains and overuse injuries.
I am not cowed by intellectual discussion either. Ideas are simply thoughts, and I can consider horrific things in my mind and then discuss their implications calmly and rationally and still sleep deeply without a hint of a disturbing dream.
I always thought I was strong.
I am not.
I’m lost in a maelstrom of grief and doubts and fears right now. Deeply and profoundly lost.
My grief is so vast I cannot sense its contours. It imbues everything I do, everything I think, and it overwhelms everything I feel. If I’m conscious then I am on the verge of tears, and sobs break through several times a day, triggered by any number of thoughts of Kim or my family or my friends, kindnesses and fears alike.
I grieve for Kim, certainly. She is still very much alive, and she improves every day, but so much of her joy came from physical activity that she may not be able to do again: tennis, gardening, knitting. She may regain enough function to do some or even all of it, but how might she respond if she can’t? And how will that change how she sees me, since we enjoyed a very physically-active lifestyle so much? Will she resent limitations? Will she resent me without them?
I grieve for the simple life we anticipated together. I had settled into Kim in so many ways, comforted, protected, but mostly just appreciated. We had developed some routines that smoothed our life together, and we would have had more as time passed and we found new ways to satisfy ourselves. Which of our routines will change? Fade away? What will replace them? What will we need to do for each other that we never considered, and how will we feel about that?
I fear for my own health, my daily physical pain so sharp and agonizing that I feel like it’s a manifestation of all my emotional stress. I can explain why it happened in physical terms, but that my left hip simply refuses to heal remains a cipher. A dear friend, a devoted yoga practitioner, many years ago told me that the body stores grief in the hips, and with the level of grief I feel perhaps that’s the best explanation for my unresponsive strain.
But mostly I fear the unknowable. Will Kim still love me like she did, or will this traumatic change lead to reevaluations, reassessing my role in her life? Will she want to go forward with someone who collapsed emotionally and physically when she most needed my love and support?
We fit so well, hand in glove, but this stroke could be a massive change. How will it change our fit? Will I be able to satisfy Kim’s new needs, or will I disappoint her? And how patient will we be as we adapt our relationship to our new needs? Will she remember why she loved me, or will some of those reasons be lost forever in the damaged tissue inside her brain? Will I still look the same to her, or will she see the frailty and cracks and weaknesses that she overlooked before? Can I do for her what I have done in the past, even as she might need something different?
And a relationship is never just the two people in it. Will our families see us in the same ways as before? Will doubts previously muted now be voiced to protect one or the other of us? How might our families try to influence us, towards each other or away? And how receptive will we be to each other in our new circumstances? Will we continue to grant grace when we’re frustrated, or will expectations and impatience fracture the generosity that has characterized our relationship until now?
I love Kim, even as I feel unworthy of her, especially now as I lay suffering in her house an hour from where she needs me to be. I will press on, uncertain in what lies ahead, hoping for a wonderful future with Kim, but also afraid of being cast out of her embrace.
A stronger man could handle that thought better than I ever will.
