My wife said it last night, and she’s right: Sometimes I’m too nice.
It may sound strange coming from a cranky misanthrope, but of course behind every cynic is a beaten optimist. The peace-love-and-understanding (which apparently is funny after all) of my upbringing has always manifested itself in ways both beneficial and destructive.
On the good side, I have very good relationships with all of my ex-girlfriends. I’ve burned very few bridges in my life, and can count my actual enemies on less than one hand. I’m very good at defusing tense situations, and prefer compromise to conflict more often than not. If there’s a way to get along, I’ll find it.
But oddly for a self-absorbed INFP, I sometimes forget to make sure I get what I need. The cat’s petting needs have sidetracked writing sessions. Nights out to assuage the wife’s melancholy have postponed many an hour of creative pursuit. The calls of “Daddy!” from behind my door send me out for playtime. These are little losses, but they build over time, and eventually thoughts of works undone begin to creep up my spine, and I just snap.
The snapping usually involves an exhaustive rant to the wife, as well as fantastical thoughts of lotto wins and other white horses galloping in from unforeseen directions to swoop me out of the mundane and into the world I still dream of inhabiting, but which seems to drift farther away each day.
In the throes of my recent illnesses, the coping mechanisms I’ve built up over the years completely broke down, and I saw the truth unvarnished: I am an unhappy man living a life I never wanted, with any real hope of a reversal growing dimmer the older I get and the more responsibility I accept. All of the stories I tell myself in times of health to keep my mind off of its misery were exposed as the lies they are. Certainly there are grains of truth in them, but the underlying despair still burns white-hot in my core, though I have taken pains to dampen it with wet rags of reason.
And that’s the real problem: Reason exists. Sitting here with pen and paper, it’s beyond obvious that the path I’m currently taking is the logical one given my circumstances. I have done the best I can. But don’t tell that to my heart, who cares not a farthing for reason, and aches to work in a space unbounded by the petty animal concerns that bog humans, especially those raised middle class, down in debt and indenture.
I write this at my desk at work, in full view of my supervisor, who is likely well-versed enough in the duties of my position to realize that this does not look like company business. But my mind is not here, and has not been for a while. This eventually happens in every job I take, and it was not as problematic when I was a childless temp. I would simply move on, docked for a few workless days between assignments, and start afresh with people who gave me the benefit of the doubt.
These practical fallback thoughts I have of getting a degree and teaching history are looking more dubious now. That, too, requires this elusive free time which flies from my weak grasp, a grip that falters as I consider the happiness of others alongside my own. There are times when I have to choose, and in most cases, damn me, I defer. Were I more selfish, I would probably get more done, but I might also have run my wife off many years ago.
With adult relationships, though, these things are negotiable. But to a child, all he sees is a father he wants to spend time with, and that father choosing something else for his attentions. I know it happens all the time, and it is a necessary lesson for children that they are not the center of the universe, but I’m haunted by a spectre. A ghost who hid behind newspapers, and in his workshop, emerging only to dispense criticism and provide an example of what not to become.
My wife tells me that I’m not my father, and that’s true. But one reason is that I default to compromise rather than selfishness. And it makes me miserable. So is it better to be selfish and miserable, getting things done but sacrificing time with loved ones that you will never get back? Or does the compromise bring the late-ripening fruit borne from the strong bond between father and child?
There is a third option, of course, and it’s the one I fear. That is the attempted merging of these approaches that is threatening to tear my brain apart, and may one day result in a mental collapse that will do my son no favors, and may in fact finish me off.
I’ve addressed prospective splits with my wife in this space before, and each time we seem to come to the conclusion that it’s better to work around our problems than to use them as a springboard into divorce. Some of the factors we use, though, are more practical than emotional. Living separate lives would raise costs for each of us, and create logistical difficulties. Plus it introduces a variable that terrifies me in particular, which is the possibility that my son will carry the divorce-child’s burden in his heart. I have no personal experience with that brand of emotional turmoil, but I know far too many people who are its victims, and I have no wish to put my son through that.
I don’t have any answers today. All I see is the path before me, and in its dimness could lie anything. My brain wants to play fortune-teller, and it profits me less to imagine orcs ahead than unicorns. We tell ourselves stories all the time, and the only way to find out if they’re true is walking forward, one step at a time.