The Winter of Our Discontent: Don't Bring Me Down

There is something so devastating when you realize something about someone you've known for such a very long time.  One of those strategic pieces of the puzzle that makes us sit there and with our jaws slack.  We can't believe what we heard--or saw--we can't believe that in some weird way it makes perfect sense.

Then, we sit there and wonder, "Okay, now what do I do?"  Meanwhile, an awareness washes over us that makes us see that what we might have waited and waited for never would have come.  I found that out about my husband a few weeks ago.

He innocently told me he liked to ride around his neighborhood with a cassette tape player strapped to his bicycle playing the E. L. O. song,  Don't Bring Me Down over and over again.  I teased him about it for a few days, but I'm pretty sure he didn't realize what he had just revealed about himself and how much I had learned.

For whatever reason, he chooses not to know.  He chooses not to hear about it, deal with it, or address it.  He doesn't want to be "brought down."  Where does this come from?  To not want to be bothered to the point of letting someone else and other things dictate your life?  I can't imagine.  However, in my dazed amazement, I understand him a little bit more now.  I understand that a lot of what I'd been waiting for, hoping for a sign of whatever it was that made him check out of his life and let others lead.  Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

That frustration of seeing him take my lead every day of our married lives.  Experiencing nothing from him.  Nothingness.  That's more like it.  Nothingness.  I wondered why I can't talk to him about my concerns, my disappointments, my failures, my longings.  Why we didn't feel like the "best of friends."  Why wondered why anything but surface banter between us always ended in me getting angry at him and hating him.  He's not interested in what makes me who I am or anyone who they are.  He wants the surface, the exterior, the congeniality, the cordiality.  Don't bring him down.  Don't be real.  Don't be sad.  Don't be disappointed.  Don't be angry.  Don't want more.  Don't strive for improvement.  Don't expect anything from him.

Don't

Don't

Don't