Week Thirteen - A Day in The Life -  Air Pollution Advisory

I don’t know whether it’s him or it’s me. I don’t know what to think any more. Paul tells me things are ok now and I shouldn’t worry about his job any more. The job was never the issue, actually, after the first few days. It was more his way of dismissing me and not talking to me about how he felt and what he thought during those weeks that bothered and still bothers me now. There doesn’t seem to be any way for me to let him know that. In fact, he lost his patience with me the other day, when I told him the issue wasn’t over for me. He accused me of not letting go and driving him away - can you imagine? - driving him away with my “obsessions,” that’s what he said! I was crushed. I don’t obsess; I just want to discuss how we feel about the issues between us. This way I can let go of them.

We never really talked about what happened to him after he lost his job. After that first night when he announced he had been let go, whenever I asked him anything about it, he’d brush me off and quickly change the subject. What was going on in his mind? This is what I still don’t know.

Am I stuck on something I should let go of, or is he avoiding talking about this, for whatever reason of his own? Actually, I don’t even care to talk about his job any longer. Now he is working. He seems to be happy. I don’t worry about money, so everything should be ok, shouldn’t it?  But no, things are not ok between us. It is like there is something that wasn’t there before. Something that got between the two of us; something that doesn’t make me feel as close to him as I used to feel.

What is it? I can’t say. I don’t know how to explain it. Nothing has changed between the two of us, and yet a lot has.  Now when we talk, he looks at me in a different way, and I look at his face to discover if there is something he is not telling me, for instance how he TRULY feels about me. I always knew he loved me. I always felt I knew what he thought most of the time. Often we didn’t even have to talk in order to communicate what we thought and felt. Somehow we knew it just by looking at each other.

Well, that sixth sense now seems to be gone, at least for me, and I think for him too. I look at Paul and have no clue about what is on his mind. His eyes don’t tell me any more what’s going on inside. It’s like I lost a good friend and I don’t know what to do to get it back. Perhaps this is only a temporary stage in our relationship. Perhaps Paul was so absorbed in his own issues that he didn’t have time to be aware of me. Ouch, I don’t like the way this sounds. Paul did not have time for me? I always was his first priority! He always had time for me before. So, why not now?

I think I need to let go of my feelings and try to go with the flow, which means do what Paul tells me I should do: forget about the whole issue of the past few weeks. After all, all is back to normal now and I should be grateful for that. You know that old saying: “Fake it until you make it?” Well, this is what I should do:  pretend that everything between us is just peachy, and act accordingly. Maybe this way we will be again the way we were before? I miss that so much.