what's_wrong tender_square she relayed her dream about “curtains” to him, while he spread peanut butter into the four corners of his toast. “i’m worried it was a dark dream.” she was perched on one of the stools in the kitchen, facing him. “not a nightmare, just…” she trailed off. “it doesn’t sound that way to me. it actually sounds very positive considering where we’ve been.” he was referring to the years of grief they carried, separate burdens. she started to cry. he sighed, lifted the knife into the air. “what’s wrong?” she swiped at her eyes with her sweater sleeves, waited until her breath normalized. “i think i’ve been depressed.” “you have?” that he wouldn’t know this didn’t bother her; she did a good job of hiding it from him, crying when she was alone to avoid detection, to sidestep scrutiny. “yeah, and i feel like the dream was showing me that, bringing me into awareness of it. i’ve been fighting it, hesitating to classify it as that.” they shifted into the living room and sat on the couch together as he ate breakfast. “is it the work stuff, or is it something else?” she could only give a partial truth. “yeah, i think it’s the work stuff.” he encouraged her to reach out to former coworkers, to send her resume to the temp pool. “something’s bound to turn up.” “yeah, but it’s a matter of having the motivation to do it.” she stared out the window. “it’s not going to happen today, it may not even happen this week. but next week, i’ll do it.” she turned back to look at his profile mid-chew. “i may need a 10-minute walk on my own every now and then,” she said. “y’know, when my moods quickly change.” he swallowed. “you know i’ll go with you.” “i know, but i think it’s best that it’s something i do for myself.” she qualified the statement to soften. “i still want to prioritize walks with you every day, and i’m not saying i’ll take a 10-minute walk every day, but i need to be able to do that when it gets to be too much for me.” he nodded. later, on their walk he admitted that he didn’t write. “oh, no! were you tired?” “no, i was worried about you.” “shit. i didn’t sabotage your writing, did i?” she hadn’t intended to cause him to worry, she couldn’t hide what she was going through anymore, it didn’t seem fair to him. “no, no,” he assured her. “good.” “y’know, i ended up buying a pair of skates online.” “you did?” he’d been considering joining a local hockey team to socialize and bring that competitive and athletic edge back as an adult but he needed to learn how to skate first. “what motivated you to do that?” “well, it was your stuff this morning,” he said. “i realized that i need to get out there and do things on my own too.” when she journaled about their exchange after, buoyed by the space slowly forming that allowed her to feel less suffocated, she considered his reaction that morning. “why does he sigh like he’s so often exasperated whenever i cry, without making any move toward me? how have i accepted that as a concerned reaction from him? i’m not expecting him to drop everything and rush over to me but that annoyed sigh i could do without. something encouraging to say or even a hug would be better than that.” she concluded, “this is why i don’t bring things to him.” she questioned her motivations, “does that mean i’m asking him to be a different person or does it mean it just doesn’t meet my needs?” she certainly wasn’t going to mention to him how she felt their conversations could be improved, she knew better. and so, she chocked it up to her needs, trying to locate the strength within herself to own them without apology or guilt. 220120 ... tender_square "it's stuff from yesterday." "you mean the dream?" on their afternoon walk, he mentioned the storyline, the two of them crossing the border into mexico, how they held different paperwork, hers being longer and more complete than his was. she was accepted by immigration but he was told by officers he may be required to provide more documentation. he said that the person in charge of producing their paperwork had been her writing mentor. she didn't have much to offer as they discussed it; typically, his dreams had a preponderance of symbols she could walk around, like viewing an art installation, taking in all the angles. she asked what mexico meant to him and, while he enjoyed visiting there in the past, he said it would not be a place he’d want to visit now because it was "unstable." she asked if, in the dream, she had crossed the border without him, and he said no. "it wasn't like i was being told 'you cannot pass go,' more that there could be a potential issue." "maybe there's a lesson somewhere in there," she offered. she asked why her writing mentor was a prominent figure—did he view her as an authority or gatekeeper in the world of publishing? he said something about the culture of writing being related to intolerance and she got defensive, thinking that he was saying, by extension, her former mentor was bigoted. he accused her of being ungenerous in how she was interpreting his words and their conversation unraveled. "i just got the sense you didn't want to get into it," he said. "it just feels like you don't want to understand me." "you know, i was thinking that the dream could be more basic, but i didn't want to say that interpretation because i thought it was obvious to you already, and that you were expecting that i go deeper than that," she said later. "you said that my paperwork was more comprehensive than yours, and that my former mentor was the one who issued it for both of us. i've released a book already, and you haven't yet, but you're on the verge of finishing yours. i didn't know what i had until someone i looked up to, my mentor, someone who was at a higher level than i was, gave me insight into what i was holding. that could be why i was cleared for crossing into this 'unstable' place, as you called it, and why you were told your acceptance was up in the air." "yeah, but i don’t want to enter into an unstable place." "well, if you want to be a writer, you are. that comes with the territory. it's an unstable career choice." she went on to say that there were times where she felt he could be too negative about what he expected when his book was released. he was frightened of censorship, because of his belief in the power of myth, and his belief in something spiritual beyond the sensory world. "there are people who are going to think that i'm espousing right-wing values." he was worried that an eventual acceptance from a publisher would be rescinded if there was a whiff of backlash. "but those aren’t right-wing values, those are human values." she was a broken record with him, talking about the laws of attraction. "if you keep thinking about worst-case scenarios, that's what you’ll end up drawing to you." she understood the prepare-for-the-worst but secretly-hope-for-the-best lens he viewed his life through; it was one she had polished daily with her own worries for most of her existence. it took a while for her to trust that the good things that happened to her were not flukes, that she was worthy of what the universe offered, that she had worked hard to get to where she was, that whatever manifested was a direct result of those efforts. "it wasn’t just the dream stuff; there were other small things that happened yesterday where i feel like you snapped at me." "such as?" "in the car, when your mask broke and you insisted that it was fine." she had been pulling a kn95 over her large bun before work. the mask had straps that lay across her neck rather than over her ears. and stretching it to account for her hair made a strap snap. "shit!" "you're going to need another mask, you can’t use that one." "it’s fine!" "it’s not fine!" she didn’t want to deal with trying her backup mask and having the same result. "there's masks inside the office, i'll grab one of those." she knew he was trying to help, that he was only showing concern out of love, but it annoyed her, that insistence of his that she was being unsafe. as she left the car and closed the passenger door, she didn’t use enough force. she knew she'd have to fix it but wanted to get her bags from the backseat first. she saw him wave his hand in front of the door and she got short with him. "i know! i’ll fix it!" she hated the way he loitered at the curb until she walked through the building, as if he was making sure she was showing up where she was meant to be. she didn’t look behind her to wave. he wouldn’t drive away until she was through the second set of double doors above the stairs. "it was also last night before bed." "what happened before bed?" "you said your back had been hurting from a yoga stretch and i suggested that you not do that stretch anymore." "yeah, but it's not the stretch that's causing the muscle to seize up; i need the stretch to help me release it. but i know it’s not about that. i'm sorry if i was short with you." his insistence that he knew her body better than she did had irritated her. "i mean, i feel like i was sort of short with you when i noticed that there wasn’t more water in the fridge last night." "yeah, but i didn’t take that personally. i knew you were aggravated for that moment and that it would pass. and i probably should've put more water in there if i took one of your bottles." "i just don’t want this to be a constant thing between us," he said. "it's been happening with greater frequency." inside, she felt herself quietly sigh. she wasn’t perfect. and she didn’t want to be insensitive. there seemed to be no room for temporary frustration between them. couples could have those moments and still love each other, right? or was it that her unhappiness was seeping through the cracks, that the darkness of what she was going through leaked out of her? she prepared herself for what she feared could be next—a line of argument he logically constructed where something had changed in her since the summer and what was really going on? he only studied her face waiting for an answer. "i think it's the stress of starting work again, and the energy required of being there, and the energy that it has taken once i get home. it's something we're both adjusting to. i know my patience hasn’t been great, and i will try to do better with that." 220211 what's it to you? who go blather from