Learning Curve

Someone I was trying to get hold of - just to know all was ok and that I didn't need to worry about them, me, or anything else come to that - has been 'un' something to respond. 'Un' willing or 'un' able. And from the consternation and fretfulness the lack of communication has created I have embarked on a learning curve.

First thing I have learned is that I too need to respond if able, even if not really willing. I have been guilty of not responding when perfectly able. I have just been unwilling to engage. H will know what I mean as for many years she has persevered with her care and diligently stayed in touch while I have been hiding out in a cave with Him Formerly, ignoring just about everything and everyone else. I couldn't bring myself to respond regularly in case I got asked to go out and do something (see Talking Shop for expansion on that theme). Or in case I got asked if I was ok, which would make me think about things and perhaps face up to the fact I wasn't. Had I been able to talk and therefore face them sooner, perhaps I wouldn't be needing this blog right now.

The second thing I have learned is all the more painful to acknowledge - that my sense of self is so shattered that my reasoning abilities regularly go AWOL. Unable for example doesn't mean to me that they are busy, that their phone battery is dead, that they are in a meeting or that they have dropped their phone in a cup of tea (chat with Brother-in-Law for expansion on that theme). In my current world it is never any of those ordinary things that people experience every day which make them miss communications. Dear me no. No response in my world means an unable indicative of the stuff of nightmares and horror movies. Before you know it my whole future has been mapped out and turned over to a perpetual mourning and regret that if only I had called sooner things might have been ok.

Or perhaps they are unwilling. Because they hate me. Because they want to make me as miserable as possible. Because I have done something terribly wrong and they will never forgive me. Because they aren't in fact the person I thought they were, their soul has been invaded by an alien life form that has extracted their compassion and replaced it with a focused desire to drive me insane. Couldn't be they are unwilling because they just don't feel like communicating, because perhaps things are difficult and painful for them? That their unwilling is just a different kind of unable.

I have been in a place where everything is my fault, like some strange omnipotent being I am the cause of everything. What vanity to believe that if I was nicer/funnier/prettier/kinder/wittier/cleverer then their phone would run on tea and without battery and the alien life forms wouldn't stand a chance. At this point, thankfully, my reasoning abilities have returned. So, if you are able do so, do. If you are unable, try. And if that doesn't work just hope the one you can't communicate with is a lot more like H and a lot less like me. As I was. I am moving up the learning curve.

Oddly enough, I suspect I am not alone.

Yours in hope and fear, AJ x