9pm and not a second later

It is a cruelty to have to waste this weekend sick. It was a mistake on my part to want to have plans on a day whose beginnings involved my hiding under a comforter in my dark bedroom because I was oversensitive to the stimuli of being alive.

I had been looking forward to this concert for a few weeks. I did not know any of the bands playing and I did not care enough to listen to their music in advance. I cared that the show started at 5, so I could get some concert-going in before Amber said she wanted to go home.

She kept asking me when I thought the first band would go on stage, but I had no idea.

"If the doors open at 5, that's not when the music will start," she said.

"No, probably not."

"Then when? When do you think? 6?"

It is hard to approach Amber with a plan. What she most wishes to do in her off-hours is play video games and harass the pets. This time of year, anything aside from that we are doing against her expressed wishes. (Come warmer months, she will want to visit gardens, zoos, and museums. Even though it is a 63 today and Sunday will be warmer still, she remains in a winter mindset.)

If she said she didn't want to go to the concert, I would have conceded defeat. She would likely have said she would go for me, almost a favor. I had not bothered buying tickets online. I could not convince anyone else to go with us and thereby force my hand. It felt nebulous with my lack of investment. I was not in a mood to do this, but I assumed that I would be glad I had done it once I arrived at The Chance. (I have only ever regretted one concert.) It would have been an experience worth having. I had not seen a proper concert since Fuel and Marcy's Playground. (Amber argues that we went to Porchfest in Rhinebeck. Wandering around while people play disparate genres on various porches simultaneously does not fit any definition of "concert" I care to use.)

We leave the apartment early to get a quick dinner before the show. When we arrive, Five Guys is closed for renovations. Amber makes an off-handed remark that I should have known, which I take for a joke. I do not keep an updated list of the statuses of fast-food restaurants. She does not want any of the other proximal fast food. We end up Red Robin, a restaurant that requires sitting down and spending more time than we care to.

When we sit, she checks her phone and says that tickets are no longer available for sale online. Through the rest of the meal, she looks at her phone. I find myself doing the same thing, but put it in my pocket. This is not how I want to spend this time, not paying attention to the woman in front of me. Still, we don't speak. That she seems disengaged makes me feel worse, as though she is pointedly not connecting with me, a passive resistance of "You can have my body here, but you can't have the rest of me."

After twenty minutes, she gets to the point of saying she doesn't want to go to the concert.

She says that she would have wanted to leave the concert at 8 anyway, meaning that we got home at 9. I reply, "Early to rise, early to bed, makes a man healthy, wealthy, but socially dead." She does not appreciate my quotation of Yakko Warner. I had little intention of staying any later than 8 anyway.

"Do you want to do something else?" she asks.

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Something else, since we are here."

"Do you want me to try to rally Poughkeepsie friends?"

She eats a fry. "I don't care."

I realize afterward that what she was asking was if we could go home and forget about this night. I should have better read this subtext, but I felt too invested in having driven forty minutes for casual dining and silence.

I contact Sarah T. and Chris. They suggest we meet at Barnes & Noble, across the street from the restaurant, since Chris doesn't like commercialism or people enough to deal with the mall.

In the short drive, I explain that I felt that we were having a hard time communicating. I didn't think she felt comfortable telling me what she actually wanted. She didn't disagree with my assessment.

In the bookstore, our interactions perk up and the murkiness of the past few hours lifts. We show one another books and joke around. Chris and Sarah show up. We talk about the atrocity of CATS (Sarah has seen it twice to date) and media we have been enjoying. I talk so much to them that I grow hoarse. It is a partly salvaged evening.

A bit before 8:30, Amber says she would like to go home. We make our goodbyes.

In the car, Amber is close to silent again. When she is not speaking, I imagine she is thinking at me. This is something I used to do before therapy, have whole fights in my sullen head to which the other person was not privy. It raised my blood pressure and worsened my anxiety, but I didn't cause a bigger issue by letting the other person in on how we were yelling at one another.

We get home. She immediately proclaims that it is past her bedtime. She has to tend to the pets, which she sees as an onerous chore. I would gladly take care of them--I do not feel I have a hard bedtime and know the steps--but she would not let me. If I were doing this, refusing help for something that would ease my burden when upset, I would be martyring myself. ("No, it's fine! I'll do it myself! Stop bothering me!") I do not do this anymore since I have become aware that I had been doing it. I can't expect that she is doing the same.

It is ten minutes after nine, generally considered early on a Saturday night when one does not have to wake the next morning for work. She continues saying that it is ten minutes past her bedtime.

I ask if she wants to shower, but she says she has too much to do.

When I get out of the shower a few minutes later, she is crying on the stairs. I ask her why this has upset her so much, but she says she is tired. I ask her when she got up this morning, thinking that she had not slept well, but she got up at 6:45. She snaps, "Which is when I always have to wake up."

I did not realize that she considered 9pm her hard and fast bedtime on nights like this. I knew that she set alarms for herself. I didn't accept that this was something she felt she had to do. When I woke this morning around 7:15, she was already up, had breakfast, and was playing Bayonetta. She did not get up at this hour because she had anything more pressing to do than be awake.

She decides things and takes them on as her resolute burden. She has to wake up early for work and that is what she means, that she must keep to a schedule no matter. Being in bed, possibly asleep, before ten on a Saturday is not egregious from my perspective. It is from hers, as though I have willfully stolen her sleep.

When she is crying as a result of something I did, it is hard not to feel upset in turn.

I feel as though I cannot go out in the evening. More than a week ago, I asked her about this concert and had linked her to the event, which she only looked at today. I had also told her that I didn't intend to stay long when she panicked at the 11 pm end time. I tried to give her all the information I could.

I am hungry for social connection. I cannot get that entirely at 3 pm. I would feel uneasy leaving her at home so I could have fun with other people. I feel she would take offense. I don't want to be further isolated, though.

The core is that I do not fully understand what is going on with her. We have not had a dialogue before this that had made an impression on me as to why it is this way. I need to talk with her so that I do. Maybe that won't make as much of a difference, but it is still worth the attempt. Maybe it will arrest the mutual frustration between us. It is important to her and I should try to better understand her perspective here.

I need to help her express herself when it comes to shaping our plans for the weekend/free time. It was an unnaturally warm weekend and she did not want to leave the apartment. I do not want to do more things without her, but I also do not want to drag her along to do events she does not want to attend. People tend to socialize around dinner, especially this time of year. She does not like or need social interaction as I do.

I am free to feel that she doesn't communicate as clearly as I would like, but that does not mean that she did not express herself. She has not spent years in therapy, trying to better phrase herself, and I cannot expect that she will use the tools I have worked to build. She has other tools and these to not always reach me.

By the time she goes to bed, she returns to her sweet normal. I am filled with malaise, both my own from biology and that I have absorbed through the day, and have to write this all out before I can allow myself to go to bed. Otherwise, I will toss and turn, unable to sleep and feeling sullen. My bedtime both too early and too late.

When I do go to bed, I force myself to cuddle against her, even though I want to be as alone as I can in our shared bed. Skin to skin, the prickling in me eases. She wiggles into me, half-conscious, wanting to be close.

Today, I am sure we tried to treat the other with what kindness we could. It was difficult for the other person to feel it. No matter how clearly we thought we were communicating, it did not succeed enough. (Also, in my depression, I am aware I do not communicate the best that I am capable.) I want her to feel I am listening to her and, likewise, that she hears me. Neither one of us managed a perfect job of this.

Soon in Xenology: Magical thinking and witchcraft.

last watched: Raising Dion
reading: American Cosmic