An Emotional Response in Book Seven: Reconstruction 2020

I’m… not doing that great today. Or yesterday. So, I’m not doing that great these last few days. Aside from yesterday being a Juvenile Court day (so filled with kids who are abusing physically, sexually or mentally abused), I’m back to not handling the Isolation Response(s) well.

If you’ve ever had someone in your life for 15 years and then suddenly, they weren’t around anymore… you would understand how that can be extremely lonely even in the best of times. And this is usually when someone pops down to the notes section to say, “Shut up. At least you had someone! I’ve never even had that!” And if that is your impulse? Fuck off. By doing that you show a lack of understanding and a lack of empathy. If you’ve never had someone special, I feel bad for you and I empathize with you. But to have someone special no longer be around? That isn’t better. That isn’t something to mock because you feel like your life is worse off.

Anyway… even though our relationship sucked… Martha going from “part of my daily life” to “not part of my daily life” was going to be a difficult and lonely thing no matter what. But as Isolation stretches out and I feel more and more cut off from friends and family? It is so much worse than I could have imagined. And there are a lot of emotions just centering around that loneliness aspect… but there is so much more to lonely/isolation/marriage ending than simply being alone a lot more.

I find the sexual emotional response to be very interesting. When Martha was still here and we were sharing a bed… the fact that it would be months and months (or years and years) between sexual interaction carried with it some anger and rising resentment (despite my best efforts). Because here was a woman that voluntarily, knowingly, and willingly agreed to enter into an exclusive romantic and sexual relationship with me and then refused to have any kind of romantic or sexual component of our relationship. In that way, while there was still considerable sadness over the lack of romance and sexual interaction; there was a sense of anger and injustice along with it… a sense that there was something I had to do to fix it because I needed my marriage to survive. Obviously… eventually… I had to accept that if my wife did not wish to have a romantic or sexual component to our marriage and I did… I could no longer be with her. AT THE EXACT MOMENT that the world shut down.
Which means… my lack of success on any dating apps, my lack of success even getting online conversations going… that doesn’t necessarily reflect a true failing on my part necessarily. If people can’t go on dates, those apps are going to be even less useful than normal. But even still? There is no more anger or resentment. In its place is just more sadness and more depression and more loneliness. And I find my mind wandering a bit. Not to thoughts of getting back together with Martha. As depressed as I am, it is quite clear that I need to be in a relationship with an adult and though she turns 40 next month, Martha is very much not an adult. So my mind goes to the two “close but never official” which isn’t great because both of those women are gone forever.

So yeah. That’s where I am right now.