You know that weird pause you get when the lines of communication just aren’t working. That hollow echo till the line connects and that voice you are seeking comes thru. It is a strange feeling. It is amazing how just that pause creates a disjointed odd conversation. It feels a bit like that in my life right now. Not because of some bad cell tower, or a thousand miles of sea between callers. It is life, and stress. It is the million little disasters adding up and multiplying. What communication there was has tailed off into worried silence. What more is there to say? Where does one even start? But without that contact life begins to feel hollow and disjointed, like that bad phone call. Any attempts at connection fall short, or die slowly in the pauses and the short clipped non answers. I do not know that I can get what I seek from her. If communication is a weak spot under the best of circumstances, how can is possibly be okay in the midst of chaos and impending disaster. I know that the silence isn’t working for me. unfortunately when there isn’t silence there is fighting. I know neither of us mean what we say most of the time. We are reacting. As she readied herself to head home to deal with her mother I found myself anxious and overwhelmed. I fell back into my pattern of becoming irritable and nasty. I couldn’t come close to being civil. She finally yelled at me. “Why do you have to make this so fucking unpleasant? It is fucking hard enough”. I looked at her. Hard and cold. “You’ve been with me more than 15 years. This isn’t me trying to be mean, or making life harder for you. This is me panicking. This is me terrified and unsure. If you think this is about you personally being mistreated you haven’t learned a thing about me in all these years”. I don’t think she much knew what to think of that, or even what to say. I don’t know why it is always about a personal attack with her. It has nothing to do with her per se, it has everything to do with the anxiety of having to deal with this place alone. She doesn’t get it. I guess one could go on and on about attachment, and how I am too attached. That this inability to step away from her is driving the panic and the viciousness. That I am creating space before that space actually becomes a reality. yeah, uh, maybe. But what I do know is there is a real possibility of a million different things that can go wrong on any given day here. That even as two people it is extremely difficult to get thru the day. In that instant I know she is leaving my brain starts up this running movie. Every possible disaster, and how I can’t possibly deal with it. That doubt creeps steadily. Completely consuming me like a fast-moving brush fire. Leaving nothing but breath robbing anxiety. I can only hold tight and try hard not to completely lose faith in my self. That cold nasty person that arrives in my boots is the one that keeps everything running. Goes along eyes straight ahead and puts one foot in front of the other. That person is not overwhelmed. nope. That is who makes it thru the time alone. There is no place for the emotional side of me. I can’t stray too far without fear of losing my confidence. I can only move forward and count down the hours till she returns. Sad thing is, there is a piece of me that enjoys the silence, and the life here alone. It has never been like that before. Guess I am changing. Or maybe it is just I am worn thin by the constant fighting. There is no fighting right now. There is only the hum of the appliances, and the ping as the bird drops his sunflower seed shells to the bottom of his cage. Nothing else. Peace and quiet. The worry set aside for a moment in this empty house. No battle to try and communicate across those malfunctioning wires.