Week Six - A Day in The Life - Blowing Dust 

Another week of silence. Paul is still holding on to his attitude of “mind your own business” with me. It has been two weeks since he lost his job and he is not working yet. He continues to appease me with vague references to a possibility here, another there, but nothing solid, as far as I can discern. When I ask him what’s going on, any news? he pats me in the back and tries to shut me up by telling me not to worry – like I could help it – that everything is just fine and he will be back at work in no time.

I remember once when I was a kid and my parents had a fight. They never argued in front of me, so I did not know what the fight was all about, but the tension between them was so thick that it could have been cut with a knife. We were supposed to go on a weekend trip. My parents must have argued the night before. Would you think they cancelled it? Absolutely not in my house, where everything had to go on as scheduled, no matter what. That morning it was icy in the room. Neither of them spoke to each other, only to me. I became the go between: “Ask your mother if she is ready. We should leave in ten minutes.” And mother, “Tell your dad to check if all the lights are off…” This continued the whole trip, with both of them silent, unless they were talking to me, or to each other through me. 

It’s not that Paul and I are angry at one another. We can be quite civil. We can chat about irrelevant things. We can laugh. We can even have sex. But we are both on edge, no matter what Paul wants me to believe. We both know – or at east I know – that there is a subject that is taboo to talk about. Maybe this is what people refer to when they say there is an elephant in the living room? Paul and I never had a secret. We were very proud of the fact that we could be open with one another and talk about anything. I remember when we first met and would spend hours just talking about anything and everything. We would go together for a drink and hours and hours later we would still be sitting at the same table, talking. This was a new experience for both of us, because for the first time we both felt so comfortable opening up, sharing and listening. Where is all that gone now?

I said earlier that I tend to be dramatic. Maybe I am blowing things out of proportion and there is nothing to worry about. Maybe Paul will find a job next week and all this will go away, puff, disappear into nothing and we can go back being the way we were before.