The Beginning of the Pandemic
By: Letters To My Wife
Tags: Love Letters, LGBTQ, Relationships

Darling,

Today I found myself asking whether or not I’m loving you the way you want/need to be loved. You’d tell me, wouldn’t you? Am I thinking of you enough? Am I too distracted in my own world? I feel unfocused, when it comes to us. Not because I don’t know where we stand with each other. But because our circumstance calls for a lot of juggling, and with a single loose thread left unattended for a minute, all of a sudden, we become undone. And while it never surprises me, our occasional meltdowns always catches me unprepared. Maybe unfocused is not the word — helpless? Inadequate? Like I am not capable of doing enough for you, physically and mentally. Have any of our past struggles prepared me for loving you right in times like these? I know our situation is unprecedented and so uniquely difficult, but do you feel alone, or do you feel me by your side?

I thought I gave up a lot to be able to focus on the few important things: my health, us, the baby, family. I turned down the job I’ve worked towards for nearly a decade —and I’d do it again, knowing what I know now. But pandemic-era isolation has only made clear how enormous our life is, even just the critical bits. Raising A, as you have said, is more than we ever imagined. Life with him feels so vivid, falling in love with a glance again and again, feeling time with him stretch into an unknowable future filled with just my hopes and fears for him, my absolute rage when anyone (*cough* my parents) interferes with our process. Sometimes I think our relatively involved parenting style is both the product of the pandemic, and a way we survive it. The feeling of being stuck, in my case, or homesick, in your case. Maybe that’s why anything outside of our parental duties almost seems overwhelming, whether it’s a simple trip to the apartment, or a very complicated negotiation about your father’s living situation. In any case, a job is most certainly not a lot in comparison. Our life is huge, and one way it makes itself known is in the form of occasional crises dotted along an otherwise mundane, routinized life.

Part of my feeling unprepared, I think, is ultimately based on my unwavering belief in you. I trust even your boldest of decisions, your most immediate of convictions. I believe in your work and research, your abilities, and your efforts to do what you think is best for everyone. God, you embody everything I wish I was and knew how to do. I know, at the end of the day, you will get what you need to get done (next week will become last week). I want you to feel supported because I love you, not because I think you need it. You’ve managed to be respectful of my parents’ unsolicited and often unhelpful opinions with regards to A (I know that is important to you), while being firm in your knowledge of him and your own authority as his mother. You and your siblings are successfully relieving your sister of your father’s assisted living situation (this seems like an unending saga of the most inconvenient duties and emotionally delicate manoeuvers, but it will end, and you and your siblings will come out of it hopefully feeling very united). You are doing great in a difficult situation. You’re engaged with all your interlocutors while also connected to your own needs, and ready with tools to help meet those needs (walks, cooking, taking tv breaks). You’re doing it! But yes, let’s get you that assorted dessert box…and some salmon…and that massage you asked for.

I love you,

LtmW