I Miss You When I Blink: Essays(44)

* * *



But I didn’t do a great job of “keep going.”

I didn’t answer my phone or check my voice mail.

I didn’t change out of pajamas during the day.

I saw no point in washing my hair.

I sat in my car in the parking lot by the soccer fields instead of getting out and waiting with the other parents.

I thought about sleep all the time. Some mornings, I could not fathom how I would get out of bed, even though the world that waited for me was beautiful and full of people I loved. When I was awake, I wished for sleep, and when I was asleep, I dreamed about being dead. Not about actually killing myself or getting hit by a train or anything that dramatic, just being not alive. What was the point of waking up?

One night after the kids were asleep and while John was traveling for work, I opened a bottle of prosecco and drank the whole thing, sitting on my sofa by myself, pouring glass after glass into my favorite champagne flute—the one with little etched bubbles on the glass. (This is the ladylike version of pounding whiskey.) Life is short! Why not! This is a beverage I enjoy! I swallowed sip after fizzy sip, trying to feel something.

I woke up at 3 a.m. feeling like I had rubber bands knotted around my intestines, cold sweat soaking my hair, pajamas, and pillowcase. That was dangerous, I thought, sitting there drinking like that. I’m always tipsy after a glass and a half—no wonder I felt like a tank of pressurized vomit after a whole bottle. I was the only parent at home, and I got all-out drunk. I am a horrible mother. I am dangerous. What is wrong with me?



* * *



I stopped being on time—for anything. My whole life, I’d always arrived compulsively early. Suddenly I was the one always running behind. Or, if I did show up on time, I left some essential element at home—I’d make it to a meeting but forget all my notes. Whole chunks of my calendar slipped my mind.

On the first day of first and fourth grade for my kids, I forgot to pick them up.

The teacher on carpool duty called my cell phone at four o’clock (they got out at three) and said, “So . . . are you . . . coming?” I didn’t forget I had kids, I swear—I love my kids (is it ridiculous to have to say that?)—but I was getting worse and worse at keeping track of where we all had to be and when.

I often explained my frazzled lateness by saying, “Sorry, I’m trying to be three people.” I blamed my lost punctuality on the difficulty of juggling our calendars.

It wasn’t just that, though. I was distracted by more than the frenetic schedules of our household. All the other people I’d been and not been in my life were beginning to fight for their share of my brain space and their chance at a breath of real-life air, too. There were far more than three people crowded into my head. I felt like a human traffic jam.





Diane von Furstenberg’s Apartment


We always hurt the ones we love, the song says. Why? Because they’re there.

My therapist said I was depressed. And when I got depressed, I turned into a truly worthless spouse. It wasn’t that I blamed John for how I felt. But I couldn’t separate him from it, so I thought I needed to separate myself from him. Sweet John, who started doing all the laundry when he noticed I’d quit paying attention to the growing mountains of dirty clothes. Kind John, who brought home cupcakes when my doctor prescribed them (in addition to Zoloft). She said I should savor the positive sensation of slowly chewing a food I liked. He stood in the kitchen and watched as I rolled a bite of cake around in my mouth in exaggerated, cartoonish slow motion. “Are you savoring the sensation?” he asked. “I think so,” I said with a mouthful of thoroughly chewed cake.

“What if,” I asked after I swallowed my cake, “I got out of here?” I gestured widely, indicating that “here” was at least the kitchen, and probably the rest of the house.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Diane von Furstenberg and her husband keep separate apartments in Manhattan. Maybe we could do that.”

“Live in Manhattan?”

“Live separately.”

“Hmm.”

That’s where you’d expect someone to go, “What?” or to slam his glass down on the counter in shock or outrage. But big conversations like these are where the differences in our personalities really show. If someone says to me, “I need a break from you,” I immediately think, So you hate me? You never want to see me again? We’re ALL GOING TO DIE ALONE? Not John. He pauses. He thinks. He asks for clarification.

We had an hour-long discussion in which I tried to describe what I thought I meant, making it up as I went along. “Okay, what about this . . .” I kept saying, summoning every last scrap of my problem-solving, can-do attitude as I outlined imaginary logistics: co-parenting our children but with nights off for each of us, staying married and devoted to each other, but living in different homes. In the scenario I envisioned, John and the kids would stay in our house, with me in a smaller house or condo around the corner. Or maybe we’d take turns in the kid house. Maybe both houses would be the kid house? Walkable to each other, definitely. Next door? The more I talked about it, the more I wondered why all married people with kids didn’t keep two homes. Surely everyone wanted their space sometimes.

We had the conversation again the next day, and then again a week later.