The 10pm Doldrums

As Matt begins to doubt he's still a night owl...

Today was day four of this—whatever this is.

I slept pretty badly for the first couple of nights, which isn’t great for my mental and physical health (duh). I know I’ve spoken with many of you about how ingrained in my everyday routines and thoughts and patterns Kellie is, and I don’t think that’s something that will ever change all that significantly. I suspect I’ll always feel this horrific sense of wrongness about her not being here. Maybe time will make a dent, but I’d have to live to 78 to have as many adult years without Kellie as I’ve had with her, and that seems really far off right now.

Bedtime is a particular challenge for me. We have always been a couple that goes to bed at the same time. What that has meant, sadly, is that I have always forced Kellie to stay up with me far past a reasonable hour. It feels deeply off for me to go through my nighttime routine without her in my vicinity. I think my brain must be telling me that I’m neglecting her asleep on the couch or somewhere, and that I’d better wake her up to get her to bed ASAP. We have a king-sized bed, and that’s always felt pretty perfect for both our bedroom and our sleep patterns. But since that first night without her, our bed is no longer a comfort for me. It’s a place I spend some time, but it feels cold and huge and empty. I keep feeling like I’m laying on a bed in a hotel room somewhere and wishing I could be back at home. The obvious problem with that feeling is that I AM home, and that there’s no home I could pack up and drive to where she’s waiting for me with a kiss and a smile and a shoulder to lie my head against.

Last night I tried an experiment which worked relatively well—I piled up a ton of blankets and pillows on her side of the bed so that I was confined to my side. That felt a little bit like she was there, which was a plus. The other thing that helped was that Coco slept beside me (on the pile of blankets, of course) for the entire night. That’s only the first time in her life she hasn’t spent the night in her crate, and it felt special to have her stay with me. I hope to continue this trend. Some of you know the story of the FIRST time we tried letting her sleep with us a couple of weeks ago. It ended with her spending a significant portion of her evening chewing on my glasses, which means I had to see our eye doctor and pay several hundred dollars for new ones. And also that I’ve had to see many little bite marks everywhere I look for two weeks now. The new pair cannot come fast enough, y’all. So a night in bed with me was a step forward for both Coco and myself.

Today saw a significant dropoff in the number of check-ins and visits from folks. That’s a good thing (because it means people know I’m surviving), and also a good thing because it let me have a little space and time to myself. It’s a less-good thing because I found myself surprised at how much I missed carrying on forty text conversations all day. So there’s that. It would be lovely if I could just be given a bat-signal to shine into the sky when I’m lonely (or if a few dozen of you could work out a schedule of who’s going to text me from 10pm-2am). Either one, thanks.

But seriously, I spent time with my dad today, which was really nice. I also spent time with my mother-in-law, which was also really nice. I don’t know why it’s been so great just to be in the company of another human being—oh yeah—I do—it’s because I’m a frigging widower now.

The bulk of today was spent thinking about things I could do to avoid doing my homework, which resulted in me waiting until roughly 8pm to even start a huge project that was due at midnight. I suspect my motivation for the endless dithering was that the project would keep me busy through at least half of those 10-2 dark and despairing hours. Unfortunately, I finished the huge project up in an hour and a half, which meant I had dramatically overestimated how much of my evening I would be forced to think about something else.

So what happened? Well, I sat down to write a newsletter all about how I’m no longer a night owl, about how I dread the 10pm hour every single night because I know everyone else is snuggled down with somebody (even if that somebody is a good book or a cat) when I’m just here struggling. And what do you think happened next? My jerk of a friend texted me to ask how I was feeling. Which led to an hour and a half of me talking about how I wasn’t feeling great, but guess what? Even though it meant I had to do a ton of rewriting of this piece, talking to that friend about being sad made me a lot less sad. Funny how that works, isn’t it? Yes, I told her how much of a difference her random text had made in my life. Because it sure did. But I think it’s the hour and a half that followed that made the real difference. One person opens the door, the other person steps through that door, and then if all the variables line up magically, you get that conversation which really makes you feel like human connection actually exists, that you aren’t cut off from the rest of humanity permanently.

My love is like a storybook story

But it’s as real as the feelings I feel

He said, “Don’t you know I love you, oh, so much

And lay my heart at the foot of your dress?"

She said, “Don’t you know that storybook loves

Always have a happy ending”?

—Mark Knopfler

As one particular son of a bitch told me in 2001 when he was threatening to beat me up at work over something I hadn’t done, it takes two to tango. He then said to me and our supervisor after he’d gotten into a lot of trouble for his threats of bodily harm against me, “See, Matt—in West Virginia where I’m from, ‘it takes two to tango’ just means that we need to sit down and work out our differences like adults”. I guess that isn’t as applicable in this situation, though. It takes two of us to form a connection, it takes two of us to nurture and sustain that connection, and it takes two of us to work out our differences like adults (even if our only difference is the fact that you don’t want to get fired after threatening to beat up your co-worker). I guess what I’m saying is that if you act like a monster to me at work, I’ll probably still remember the interaction 25 years later. Oh, and I’m saying that friendships are hard, and that friendships with me are probably especially hard at the moment.

I’m trying not to be a bad friend, I promise. But I do hate that stupid 10pm timeslot which always comes, no matter what. Time keeps on timing, am I right? If only I could Groundhog Day it—but I know which day I’d do over again, and it’s not today. No, it’d be the last day I spent with Kellie. And I would cancel my classes and both of us would reschedule our clients, and I’d make her a big dinner, and we’d sit on the couch and hold hands with our dogs in our lap and some stupid TV show on in the background, and drink hot chocolate and smile, and we’d both be so happy. She’d know she was loved. And I wouldn’t have to keep looking at her text messages from just last week when she told me I should take that day off because I work too hard and just spend it napping with her instead.

We always have our choices, don’t we? We can’t predict what’s going to happen. We don’t know which days will turn out being the ones we relive in our heads as some of our best, or which days will turn out to be the opposite.

But what we absolutely do have the power to do is try to make the good moments, those moments of connection between us or connection with the universe, those moments when we spark joy or find hope in a hopeless place—make those moments outweigh the ones where we prioritize work, prioritize to-do lists, or prioritize all those unimportant things that feel so important when we’re in the midst of them.

I’m going to bed. Cross your fingers that the pillow and blanket pile works again for me tonight. And if you’re the person who brought me nine huge containers of soup, thanks again. The red lentil dal with spinach was incredible at midnight tonight, along with hummus and gummy bears. And some apple fritter bread, just for fun.

Hugs and kisses, and a chicken in every pot,

Matt