Out Here Trying

This morning, I sort of had a crisis.

I had a workshop to teach today, which I had some anxiety about. That doesn’t typically happen to me for material that I train on often, but it’s been about ten months since I taught this one.

Usually, when I’m nervous before a big thing, Kellie provides me a huge amount of support. I’m pretty certain that I know everything that Kellie would have said to me, both yesterday and today, about those nerves. She would have been able to convince me that it was going to be absolutely fine (which I was). I was able to literally tell myself all the things that she would have said.

But this time, that didn’t help. This time, all that it made me think about was how incredibly unfair it felt to me that I can’t have her here with me supporting me in those ways herself. It’s wrong of me to say that I deserve her more than anyone else deserves their own people. It’s impossible for me to not feel that way sometimes, though.

We worked at our relationship. We both put in a whole lot of work to focus on ourselves and what we needed and were able to give to one another. No relationship is perfect and no relationship is without friction and conflict, but we put in the hard work to get to the point where we had this married thing down pat. We were better friends to one another than we had any right to expect. We were the ideal companion for each other. In pretty much every way, we had crafted our marriage into what we were both looking for. None of that happened without all that effort. I’m proud of the tree that we grew together over three decades.

And just when things felt pretty perfect—just when 2026 was looking like it was going to be the ideal year for us and our life together—well, you know what happened.

So all that effort, all that focus on treasuring and loving one another, was SUPPOSED to pay off. We were one of those partnerships that you see in the world and are reminded that yes, people DO stay together for life. People DO get together in adolescence and grow and change and mature as human beings and still find what they need in each other. We were supposed to get to celebrate thirty years of marriage in another couple of years, and forty years of marriage in 2038. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that we might have gotten to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary in 2048. Or even our 60th in 2058, maybe.

But that’s not what happened. What happened is that I’m here on my own to watch those 30th, and 40th, and 50th, and maybe 60th anniversary dates come and go. I’m here to watch people get frustrated and annoyed at their partners for minor things and not realize what they have. I’m here to watch people split up because of entirely avoidable conflicts. I’m here to watch people hate their partners and not know how hard it gets for me at midnight when I’m alone. Or 7pm, when I’m alone. Or right now, when I’m alone.

I’m writing this even though it’s terrifying for me to put it out there in that way. I can’t help but worry that if someone knows I feel this sense of unfairness, that they’ll opt not to talk to me about their own struggles (because they’ll worry that I’m judging them and finding them less important than mine). I really don’t want to cut off any forms of human connection right now, so please don’t take it that way. I don’t feel like that all the time, just at times like this morning. It makes me sad when folks won’t talk to me about things they’re sad about because they even judge themselves as not deserving of support because of what I’m going through. So please don’t feel judged by me. I just wish she was here. It doesn’t feel fair that there are truly awful marriages everywhere I look, between truly awful human beings—but they still get to be here, and she doesn’t.

So I combined my nerves about the training into my rage at the unfairness of her being gone, and all of that put me into a pretty tough place, emotionally.

How did I respond to this incredibly challenging period of time?

I reached out to several people who love me and who would know what to say—or who would know what not to say, at least. Someone told me I’ve got this, that I’m brave and strong and amazing. Someone else told me that yes, it’s totally unfair. One person told me that they know I’m incredible at what I do, but that they also realize it was not really about a lack of confidence, it was about missing Kellie (and that they do, too). One person said that they know I’m going to do a phenomenal job, because the topic is familiar to me and something that’s absolutely in my wheelhouse, and also gave me practical suggestions about how to self-regulate in the middle of the thing if I was still panicking. And one person acknowledged, also, that it’s NOT fair. And that the work I’m doing in this training is good and important and that they’re glad I’m doing it.

Here’s the point of me running through those responses: They all gave me different things, and all of their messages were pure gifts to me. Everyone had a slightly different take, and every single person I reached out to had something to say that made a very real, very tangible difference in my life today. It was 8:30am, and all of them had other places to be and other things to do, but they set those tasks aside so they could help me make it through a bad moment.

That’s simply incredible to me. I’m still so in awe of how seen and held tightly and comforted I felt with each one of these interactions, and it was a reminder I really needed today, in the midst of crisis, that yes, I have lots of folks who will gladly step up. I just have to let them know what I need, or at least that I don’t know what I need, but that I sure need something. And they’ll be there.

If I didn’t reach out to you today, that’s because I make a conscious effort to spread the wealth around, as it were. I try not to overload any one person with my challenges, because I know that nobody has a bottomless stock of energy, no matter how much they care about me. So don’t worry, I’ll ask you for help one of these days!

The rest of my day was spent training (obviously) and wrapping up all kinds of the sorts of nonsense that one has to plan and decide and manage in the couple of weeks before a new semester starts. Things are going well on that front, and I’m thrilled that all of the challenging logistical hurdles each new academic year brings are coming into focus for me, one by one. It’s going to be a hard year, but a good one too.

That’s the plan, anyway. And you know how confident I feel about plans, these days.

XOXO,

Matt