Going Dark

(This story contains brief mentions of serious medical conditions)

Going Dark

“I’m leaving.”

“Where are you going?”

“You don’t understand. I’m leaving you, this, us.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Really? The suitcase didn’t tip you off? I just don’t see this getting any better. I’m cutting my losses.”

“What getting better?”

“Us. This is no kind of life. You don’t want to do anything. You hardly talk to me. I can’t remember when we last had sex. We’re like roommates that have completely independent lives.”

“Are you friggin kidding me? You’re not happy, and your first response is to leave? No discussion? No, let’s see if we can work this out. No counseling?”

“We are who we are. Neither of us is going to change.”

“Is there someone else?”

“No. There’s no one else.”

“Really? Because every time I hear of a couple breaking up there's a third party.”

“There’s no party. Third or otherwise. Believe me.”

“So, you’re so desperate to get away from me, you’ll just abandon a twenty-year marriage to be completely alone. I must be some kind of monster.”

“I didn’t say that. Frankly, it would be easier if you were more of an asshole. Look, it’s the oldest story in the book. I get wrapped up in my work. I see your eyes glaze over when I talk about all the fundraising I have to do. You just don’t want to hear it anymore. So you grow less interested, and so I communicate less and less.”

“Yeah, well, that’s the same look that I see on your face when I bring up another crazy co-op board. I just figured you were just tired of hearing about the real estate business, so I stopped talking about it.”

“You know what? You’re right. But it’s not just that. We have less and less we do together. I brought up Spanish lessons, ballroom dancing…nothing. And you make no effort. It seemed this was just the way it was going to be between us. And it’s always easier not to change. But I can’t live the rest of my life like…this. So I have to get out of here and find out how to be happy even if it’s by myself.”

“So, you’ll be exactly who you are, but you’ll be alone. Do you think that will be better?”

“Yes. I have no illusions about being alone. I know how to be alone. But living with you and still feeling this lonely. I just can’t take it any longer. I keep making excuses for why we don’t seem to connect with each other at any level. When I run out of excuses, I manage to distract myself, but it’s not working anymore.”

“Don’t you assume any responsibility for this? It’s not like you’re initiating much conversation, or you ask for sex, and I turn you down.”

“I know. I suppose you could say it’s my responsibility to ask for what I need.”

“And?”

“I don’t want to. I want you to express your desire for me, to engage me, to initiate action without me having to express it.”

“Wow. Do you think that’s fair?”

“No. But I’m not concerned with what’s fair. I’m 55 years old, and with any luck, I can have a reasonably satisfying life. I need to have what I want before it’s impossible for me to get it. I don’t know if I can even get it now.”

“So, you’ll throw this all away for the possibility you can get what you want.”

“At least I’ll always have the possibility. If we stay together, I’ll never have it.”

“Did you ever consider that if you told me you were so unhappy, I would want to do something about it?”

“No. You’d just grudgingly do stuff you don’t want to do to placate me, it would be glaringly obvious, I’d be resentful, and it would just be delaying the inevitable.”

“I have to say it sounds like you wouldn’t want this to work out even if it could.

“I just don’t see the point in dragging this out.”

“Don’t do this! Can you stand there and tell me you can’t find anything positive about our relationship? Why did you marry me? I’m the same guy now, I was then.”

“You see? That’s the problem. You see homeostasis as a virtue. It’s not. It’s the beginning of the end. And you know what? It’s not that our lives haven’t changed. They have, but they’ve gotten smaller. Our circle of friends has shrunk; the things we do together have shrunk to almost nothing. I’ve tried to engage you in new things, but you’re rooted to that chair. I even thought that if I did some stuff myself, you’d feel motivated to join me, but you’re content to let me go out on my own. I didn’t get married to live a life by myself.”

“You really want to be like those couples who have to do everything together like they’re joined at the hip?”

“No. I don’t mind doing some things myself, but you show no inclination of wanting to do anything with me want you to how no inclination to want to do anything with me. I feel like as a couple we’re going to disappear, and it doesn’t seem to bother you.”

“I don’t know. I suppose I’m not walking around in contented bliss all the time, but I accept the fact that relationships have their ups and downs.”

“I’m sure that’s true, but all I’m experiencing is the downs.”

“How long have you been feeling like this?”

“I can’t remember anymore when I didn’t.”

“That’s really disturbing.”

“Yes, it is. But you know what’s even more disturbing? That you’ve never thought anything was wrong. If anything describes how differently we’ve been going through life, it’s that.”

“So, this is it. You’re just going to pack up and leave.”

“I’ll stay at Donna’s for a little while until I can find a place.”

“So obviously you told her about this.”

“Well, yeah, I had to tell her. I knew I’d need somewhere to stay”.

“Who else knows about this?”

“No one. I asked her not to say anything until I spoke to you.”

“How long have you been thinking about this?”

“About a year.”

“Are you kidding me? A year! just out of curiosity, why did you wait a year to tell me how unhappy you are?”

“I know it may not seem that way to you now, but it’s taken me that long to get the courage up. I mean we’ve been together for a long time. This wasn’t like… I woke up yesterday and decided to do this.”

“Well, I suppose you picked a good time to leave.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…I guess I can’t be too upset with you holding on to something difficult to talk about. I’ve done the same thing.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It looks like I’ve got testicular cancer.”

“What? Oh my God! How long have you known this?”

“About two weeks. I was waiting for a good time to bring this up, but you know I’m not completely clueless. It’s been very chilly in here, and I just couldn’t bring this up while you were being so cold.”

“What does the doctor say?”

“I have an appointment at Sloan-Kettering for a second opinion. I’ll know more then.”

“OK, well, I can put everything on hold…”

“Oh no. Do you think I want to deal with cancer and your pity? No thank you. You want to go, go.”

“What are you talking about? It’s not that I don’t love you, I’m just trying to be happy.”

“Well, I can’t imagine taking care of me is going to get you there.”

“I’m sorry. This changes everything.”

“Really. What does it change? All this has done is compound your unhappiness. By having to give me more attention and you get nothing. And how do you see this playing out? Let’s say I get incredibly lucky, and my cancer goes into remission. I recover, and now that’s your signal to pack up and leave? Or if I don’t get better, you stay with me as I get sicker and sicker? There goes your plan to be happy until…who knows when.”

“I don’t know what to say. I don’t have a rational explanation for why I feel I want to stay here and take care of you. Maybe it’s just as simple as I still love you.”

“But not enough to try and work things out.”

“Can you just try to understand that things don’t exist in a vacuum? Stuff happens that upends how we think. Let me ask you. If the situation was reversed, would you stay?”

“Of course.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, but it’s not really comparable. I can’t imagine me leaving you, and even if I thought about it, I would hope we’d try everything before it came to that.”

“Yeah. Well, you’re a better person than I am. I was thinking that you don’t love me enough to stay.”

“I must have been doing a terrible job of communicating that to you. “

“I hate to make you feel worse, but if I’m being honest, you’ve done a crappy job. And if I’m really being honest… I haven’t been so great at it either.”

“No. And I’m no better than you at telling you what I need. Why do you think we’re not better at this after all this time?”

“I don’t know. Habit. Complacency. More risk to be disappointed.”

“But why the urgency to leave tonight?”

“I told you, I’m not going to…”

“…You were practically out the door.”

“It’s a little more serious now. I have breast cancer.”

“Holy shit. I’m so sorry. When did you find out?”

“Two days ago.”

“Wait. So now is when you decide to leave?”

“I can’t deal with being sick and unhappy at the same time. And it just makes my need to have a life more desperate.”

“So you’d rather go through this alone?”

“Being alone is not the same as being lonely. You’ve pulled so far away from me in the past few years, I can’t bear to be here and dependent on someone who can’t even register how unhappy I am. How can I expect that person to see me through this?”

“I don’t know if I’m allowed to be hurt, or angry at you right now, but I’m both.”

I get that. I’ve always hoped that we’d have more things to share, but this is not what I had in mind.”

“Yeah, I got to admit, that ballroom dancing class is looking pretty good to me right now.”

“Looks like you’ve dodged that bullet. I don’t think either of us will be dancing for a while.”

“Hey, sickness and health, remember?”

“Those were just words we repeated twenty years ago.”

“I really think you should stay. No, I want you to stay.”

“It’s going to be hard.”

“Don’t sugarcoat it, it’s gonna suck for both of us.”

“Maybe we can take turns being miserable. We can certainly take each other for treatments. Let’s just make sure we don’t schedule them on the same day.”

“That sounds fair. But seriously, when we get through this…”

“That’s optimistic…”

“…When we get through this, we need to remember today.”

“What about today?”

“I don’t want our relationship to be all about our illnesses, because when we get well, we’ll be right back where we were ten minutes ago unless we’re honest about what we need and what we can give each other. We’re going to have a lot of time on our hands, and rather than focus on how crappy we feel, I’m imploring you to come with me to talk to someone and try to get to a place where we can both be happy.”

“In that case, we’ll have a lot of work to do.”

“How about we start now?”

“Can we actually take on trying to repair our relationship right now?”

“How can we not?”