wet_mattress tender_square “an example of the alteration of personality in the sense of diminution is furnished by what is known in primitive psychology as ‘loss of soul.’ the peculiar condition covered by this term is accounted for in the mind of the primitive by the supposition that his soul has gone off, just like a dog that runs away from his master overnight. it is then the task of the medicine-man to fetch the fugitive back. often the loss occurs suddenly and manifests itself in general malaise…[in civilized men,] it is the slackening of the tensity of consciousness, which might be compared to a low barometric reading, presaging bad weather. the tonus has given way, and this is felt subjectively as listlessness, moroseness, and depression. one no longer has any wish or courage to face the tasks of the day. one feels like lead, because no part of one’s body seems willing to move, and this is due to the fact that one no longer has any disposable energy.” —c. g. jung, “concerning rebirth,” collected works 9.1 (p. 119) * in the months before i met you, i was aimless. i tried to create a routine, a direction, anything to anchor me in the days that stretched ahead like a path waiting for me to walk, and yet it all felt empty and dispiriting. i was devotional about showing up for these disappointments, even though there was no movement, even though i felt stunted. maybe this was my “loss of soul” moment; i didn’t even realize that it had left me. * a few days after i heard from you, i had a dream that michael and i were living in a messy basement. there were kids toys strewn everywhere and the stuff we shared was piled around the walls of space in ways that made it difficult to see or access what was what; it was as though we were in the midst of either moving out or moving in. our bed was a mattress in the middle of the floor. i went upstairs, and the house belonged to my neighbor. he was out on the porch in galoshes inspecting water damage from melting snow. water had buckled in underside of the porch roof and was running fast through the eaves, which i took to mean that there would soon be damage in the basement. i tried tending to the basement, tried to collect michael’s and my stuff together to rescue. i grabbed an errant video camera and put it in its bag for safekeeping. i was going to trash all the toys but started going through them looking for items i wanted to keep, a polly pocket being one of them—i was trying to track down the little figurine that went with the shell. when i passed the mattress, i noted a window box i hadn’t seen before and there was a nest and inside was a couple of ducks and a peacock the size of a small bird. i went upstairs and asked our neighbor if i could move the mattress to his living room so michael and i could sleep later and he agreed saying, “i’ll pour sugar on whatever spots get water on them” like it was some remedy to fix the damage. * five days later, a huge storm hit ann arbor. the thunder was unlike anything i had ever heard before, i could not fall back asleep in that cacophony of cymbals. i awoke that morning to a power outage in the house and an alarm continually sounding—it was the sump pump. the backup was flashing, saying that there was a problem with the battery, that it needed to be replaced. the manual for the backup system said “a sump pump failure is imminent.” i thought about the failure michael and i had on oakwood where the whole basement was flooded with a foot of water that reached the first or second step of the stairs and i was worried it was about to happen again. i woke up michael for help, and he came downstairs in the dark, helping me peer into the well with a flashlight. the basement was dry, but it was obvious that the system was not running, which meant when the power kicked back on, it was very likely we’d be inundated with groundwater, causing a back-up in our half-finished basement. the manual said the only way to fix this was to get a new battery. michael drove to advance auto parts while i stayed back, alone. i called my parents for support and my dad said to empty the sump pump well with a bucket in the meantime and so i did. the rainwater water was near the top of the well; i had to use a small trash bin, it was the only thing that would fit between the pipes, and i felt like i was emptying the ocean with a thimble. i must’ve did this for twenty minutes. it physically hurt to squat and bend and lift with that weight. michael returned with the battery, and it was 50 pounds i had to carry from the car to the basement. luckily the rain had stopped by then, which helped things. dad had advised me that black was negative and red was positive on the battery, making it sound easy, though i’d never changed one before. it didn’t take very long. the previous alert cleared and when i pressed the “reset” button the well drained and the alarm stopped sounding. * that afternoon i wrote in my morning pages about you. i tried to talk myself through my crush, to identify and rationalize my feelings, to explain them away and say that friendship was indeed possible, that “it’s hard to find people who can back you—look at what happened with me and ‘book_club.’ the people who really support you are the people worth holding onto, i think.” but later that night, michael and i had a confrontation after he saw me writing to you. “i thought i was acting normal but i guess i wasn’t,” i wrote later. “things got weird between us, the air was charged.” michael had left the room and i asked if he was okay, and i told him i felt uncomfortable admitting that i was writing to another guy. he asked if something was going on between you and i and i said no, that i thought it felt weird because i didn’t have guy friends and because of that, it felt awkward for me, which was true. i told him i think i got carried away with the flattery you gave me. i explained to him that i saw you as working towards this creative ideal i wanted to aspire to and because of that, your reaction to my writing meant a great deal to me. michael asked me how many messages had been exchanged between us and i lied and said about one per week, when there had probably already been close to ten. because our exchanges had been about personal art we created, i told michael i felt uncomfortable about where it could lead, that i didn’t feel right about it, and so that’s why i thought it was important to tell him. he said that if correspondence continued between us months from now, he wouldn’t be happy, and i knew that to be true. afterwards, i couldn’t sleep that night. i knew i had to hold myself to cutting off contact with you. “michael admitted to being depressed lately and he wondered if his shutting down contributed to this happening, which broke my fucking heart,” i wrote. “i said i thought the pandemic had something to do with it, trying to reach out and connect with people and he understood. i know the intimacy i have with this person is not so different than what i share with michael, which scares the living shit out of me.” and so this is why i wrote to you to say i couldn’t be in touch anymore, to say that the intimacy we had uncovered/fostered was not appropriate for me to engage with as a married woman, that our exchanges had only increased in depth and frequency. * after i sent that difficult email to you, i listened to a “this jungian life episode” about emotional affairs. the hosts said that there was a lot of shame and secrecy around the topic, that they encountered in their practice as therapists quite a bit. they claimed that these relationships tied in with the medieval idea of “courtly love” where “pining spiritually for someone made you a better person, it constellated some kind of spiritual quickening that allowed you to develop.” the hosts emphasized that in these situations, a symbolic attitude should be adopted; the feelings are important even if we may not know what they mean, and there is pain around it. sometimes, they said, the situation needs to be concretized, too—and i’m aware of that, because i’ve been in this situation before with leaving my first marriage to be with michael. in the devotional aspect of an emotional affair, the hosts said that it’s about giving yourself over to fullness; what is shameful and secret about that relationship is the wrong feeling. the recognition of qualities that one is hungry for—the permission to rise and be gratified is the best outcome opening the emotional stream between two people. “a need for emotional permeability and a need to be seen in that dimension and engaged in that dimension is transformed into a commitment.” they said that this kind of interaction could be an enlivening agent that ends up coming forward in the marriage later. after i wrote this quote down, i asked myself the question of whether you were an energy drain or an energy draw from my union. * when the sump pump failed, i thought this was a message from the universe telling me i needed to act with greater responsibility. in jungian psychology, the unconscious is symbolized by water. that my domestic sphere was about to be ruined by things that moved within me unawares put the fear of god into me. and so i told michael about you. and so i emailed you to say that i couldn’t talk to you anymore. * when i think back to the dream about the messy basement, i see the state of my life. it’s messy as fuck. michael and i have endured so much; no wonder we can’t tell if we’re coming or going—we’re simply surviving. but in the dream, i am the only one who tries to rescue what’s important: the video camera is to document every future moment. the figurine i’m looking for to match the polly pocket shell is me, the version of myself i’ve made so small over the years to keep other people comfortable. and you are peacock, a symbol of re-growth and regeneration, holder of beauty and love and passion, looking on. no matter how much sweetness is sprinkled on that soggy mattress, it’s not going to save it from ruin. * the alarm that sounded the day the sump pump failed was not to keep me from danger, but rather to bring my attention to the fact that my soul had left me—my energy was gone; i could not drain the water from the well which threatened to crest the confines and ruin everything. a new energy, a new life force, had to be brought in and harnessed to take on this monumental task. i stayed back alone to clear out that unconscious material rising in the well. i sent michael out to get the battery. we have often joked he’s the shaman/medicine-man type for how far he stands at a remove from what’s happening in the culture, seeing the larger trends none of us can see yet. i alone installed the new wires on the battery—red is positive. red is why i’m here. * after you and i stopped talking, i considered whether what i felt with you was an imaginal affair, something that i had invented in my head that wasn’t there. and i grieved that, worrying that perhaps my message made me look like a foolish woman. worrying that, in your reply i didn’t read, you were claiming nothing happened, or worse, that you thought i was blaming you for things you did, which wasn’t what i meant. but i wrote, “i didn’t imagine this. i know he feels as deeply as i do.” i continued, “i knew he was someone i idealized before, yet talking to him made me feel like a peer, that we were equals, and that was a powerful realization for me, the woman who downplays her gifts. i think we each saw one another in ways we hoped to be seen by others, and that’s an incredibly gratifying feeling. i keep telling myself that i didn’t know him at all, that i only pretended to, but the thing is, i think we really did see each other for who we are and that’s what scared me because i know he is exactly the kind of person that i should be with.” “what i hope he can impart from my last message is that he a threat. he would not be a threat if he didn’t mean something to me. i don’t know if he can see it now, but i hope he can eventually. all i keep thinking is, if he can see that at some point, he can understand why i needed to do what i did, why i needed to stay true to who i was with so that he can expect the same from me. when i can finally show up, i’m going to be there.” 211014 what's it to you? who go blather from