But.....

This is a post I wrote a few weeks ago about some of the stresses we’ve been going through. Specifically Mrs S’s reactions to immigration setbacks. Fortunately she’s past the negative stuff now, but at the time I was completely backed into a corner and contemplating all sorts of dire scenarios.

…Just made a nice supper this evening. A nice slab of Sockeye that I’d barbecued. Three of my delicious nine minute boiled eggs, toast, lettuce and a smattering of seafood fried in olive oil and butter before being chilled.

Mrs S turns up from work in a foul mood and promptly stains the whole evening because of a damned half-assed e-mail from our Immigration Lawyers saying the bank statement we’ve provided them with isn’t current. Immigration Lawyer is an idiot. Bank statement is dated June 2009 in top right hand corner, three weeks before we collated our package of documentation and sent it to her in July. Last transaction date on savings account when the interest had its yearly calculation in January 2009. I try to phone. Immigration Lawyers offices in Quebec are shut at this time of day. Mrs S gets all tearful and there’s not a thing I can say or do to ease her mind. She’s made her mind up it’s a bloody disaster, and nothing I can say or do will make a sodding difference.

To try and ease her pain a little so we could talk I got her a drink. Made her a cup of tea to help her wind down. Tried to talk. What happens? I got the figurative door in my face. This was driving me crazy. I put the supper on the table after she had the drinks, sit down to eat and what happens? She goes to the kitchen to get something, scuffs her foot and promptly collapses in floods. That was it. I had to take the dog for a walk. She ate alone. My appetite deserted me. I just felt sick and supper went to waste.

Yet again I’m at my bloody wits end and don’t know what to do. It’s like the woman I married has read all the books on how not to be unhappy and is doing the exact opposite of what they recommend. The least little thing gets her tearful and I’m buggered if I can understand why. We can’t move forward like this if she’s going to behave like the annoying archetypal girl in the slasher B-movie who falls over, twists her heel, screams and slows everyone down just as the hero is leading everyone else to safety. I’m supposed to be strong for both of us, but even the strongest have to ask for quarter sometime.

I hate it when she’s like this; it turns everything sour and no one can enjoy anything. The best food and wine are ashes in my mouth, I can’t think logically and fix whatever is going awry because if I even try I’m yapping at empty branches and the monkeys are throwing rocks from other trees. I can’t touch her or offer comfort because everything I do will be wrong. My normally eloquent tongue is nailed firmly down in my mouth for fear I will make things worse. I feel so bloody useless. “This is going to give me a bloody heart attack.” I said at one point, the words pushed out of my lips by the sheer frustration of it all. My appetite disappeared and I’m still desperately trying to leave the whiskey bottle alone. I feel I’m backed into a corner with no way out. I feel depressed by any measure of the word.

I want to throw something big and heavy and watch it smash, cut my stupid traitorous heart out with a kitchen knife, drive the bloody car off a cliff. Anything but just sit here and take it all the bloody time. Christ knows I do my best, but I'm constrained by work permits, circumstance and finance and having to tough it out because there’s no current alternative is no bloody fun what-so-fucking ever.

This isn’t right. Here we are, living in one of the most beautiful parts of the world, superb vistas, impossibly blue skies, lovely weather, nice neighbours and she’s miserable at the drop of a hat. All the resilience that should be there isn’t, and guess who’s in the firing line when her frustrations boil over. The emotional shrapnel wounds bloody hurt, and I’ve no-one to talk to but a computer screen.

I can feel a tightening in my chest every time this happens and I’m sure at some stage the stress and frustration will kill me in the not too distant future. The constant overstimulation of my parasympathetic nervous reaction may cause a rapid build up of atheroma in my coronary arteries until one gets blocked and there is a massive, terminal, cardiac infarction. The affected triangle shaped section of heart muscle will die and rupture causing a massive bleed into my pericardium. My heart will literally break. I will be at an end, and to be brutal I’m not so sure this will be a bad thing. It is at this point the darkness within me speaks up to say sneeringly; “When it’s all over and the endless night reclaims your petty consciousness; won’t that be a relief, eh, Mister ever so clever Bill Sticker?” I don’t want to agree, but the logic appears flawless from where I’m sitting. The way I feel right now, a bullet in the head would be the ideal personification of God’s infinite mercy.

Yet to let that happen would be the ultimate cop out, the easy way. There are people depending upon me to do my job. There are talks to be given, projects to be completed. People in genuine need.

The irony is that the following day I called the immigration Lawyers and pointed out their error re information on Bank statement. Immediate apology and retraction of half-assed e-mail. Yes, everything fine. No problem, everything looking great. Well thank the Lord for that.

Blood and sand.