At a Loss For Words

by Diane Schoemperlen

  You said you were going to get a cellphone so you could call me from anywhere anytime.

  I said, Yes, good idea.

  I did not say, Yes, it’s about time you joined the twenty-first century.

  I said, I don’t think I’m asking for a lot. And yet even the little I’m asking for seems to be too much.

  You said you had so many responsibilities and obligations just now. You said everyone was counting on you. You said you couldn’t let them down.

  You said, Hopefully I will return back to somewhat of a normal existence here next week. I promise to try and communicate better then…when I will hopefully have more time.

  I said, Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.

  You said you had never been under so much pressure in your entire life.

  I said I thought a lot about all the pressure you were under. I said I wanted to make your life easier, not harder. I said I wanted to be the least of your worries. I said I never wanted to be a burden to you.

  You said, I never want to be a burden to you either.

  I said, You’re not.

  I said, Like Dr. Phil always says, I want to be your “soft place to fall.”

  You said, Who is Dr. Phil?

  One day early on, after blathering on at length about some program I’d watched on TV the night before, I asked you what your favorite TV show was, and you told me that you didn’t watch television, that you didn’t even own a television set anymore. Being an incorrigible and unabashed devotee of the small screen myself, I found this so completely inconceivable that I didn’t actually believe you.

  And if, when you said it, there was in your voice that tone of superiority some people who don’t watch television adopt toward those of us who do, I chose to overlook it.

  I am thinking about all the times you said you would send me an e-mail and you didn’t.

  I am thinking about how your silences began to stretch out longer and longer: four days, a week, ten days, two weeks, three. Clearly, the daily e-mails we used to have had fallen by the wayside, at least on your end. At first I wrote to you every day anyway, whether I heard back from you or not. And every time I finally did hear from you again after one of these silences, I wrote back immediately. It took me a long time to realize that every time I did this, every time I clicked on that Send button, I had put myself right back into the same position again: waiting.

  Still waiting.

  Always waiting.

  Waiting and waiting and then waiting some more.

  No matter what else I was doing, I was really just waiting to hear from you.

  Here I was, alternating between fits of fury and fear, checking the obituaries to see if you were dead, calling your office just to make sure your voice was still there, because surely if you were dead, they would have changed your message…right?

  Here I was thinking, after three and a half long silent weeks, You’d bloody well better be dead.

  Here I was, writing still more e-mails, funny at first, then increasingly furious and/or frantic:

  Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder where you are?

  Are you there? Blink once for yes, twice for no!

  Are you okay?

  Is something wrong?

  I don’t mean to nag but…did you get my last letter?

  I don’t mean to nag but…why haven’t you replied?

  I don’t mean to nag but…where the hell are you?

  I can’t take this anymore.

  I cannot bear it when you leave me dangling here like this.

  Why are you doing this to me?

  Your silence is deafening.

  Here I was, blowing a gasket: What the hell is going on there? I cannot help but imagine the worst. Either that or you’ve decided to discontinue this correspondence without telling me. Can that be true? Maybe. I don’t know. I know nothing. You haven’t replied to my many e-mails and you haven’t responded to my phone messages either. I am pretty much at the end of my rope with trying to figure this out.

  Here I was, begging: Please please just write me a quick note, however brief, to let me know you are okay.

  Here I was, humiliated and appalled at myself for having begged: I’ve had enough. This will be my final attempt to contact you.

  And then finally you would resurface, usually with the breezy subject line Back!

  You said, No, I have not entirely disappeared from the face of this planet!

  You said, I seem to have fallen off the ledge…

  You said, I seem to have dropped off the map…

  You said, I feel out of the loop with everything…

  You said, I feel like I’ve gone into another zone…

  You said, I feel like a bit of a lost boy here…again!

  You said your e-mail had a glitch. You said your computer was down. You said your computer crashed every time you tried to access your e-mail. You said the IT people had adjusted your network connection and then it didn’t work at all and it took them a week to come back and fix it. You said you’d written to me last week, but you made a mistake typing in my address and your letter was returned.

  You said you’d sent me an e-mail last Friday and another one on the weekend, but apparently I hadn’t received them. You said, I wonder where they went?

  You said you’d written to me yesterday, but when you turned your computer back on this morning, it said the message had been “timed out.” You said, What does that mean?

  You said, I sent you letters on Thursday and Friday. I’m wondering what the heck happened as they show up as being sent, and yet it seems you didn’t receive them. So here goes again!

  You said, I wrote to you early this morning, pushed Send, but then my computer did a funny freeze thing…and my letter vanished. Hopefully this one makes it through!

  I said, Get a new computer.

  You said it wasn’t all about me.

  I did not say, I realize that…but couldn’t it be all about me once in a while?

  You said I wasn’t the only one you’d been letting down as far as regular contact went. You said your work colleagues had also been wondering where you were.

  I did not say, Bully for them.

  When I asked if you were feeling withdrawn these days, you said, Noooooo…not withdrawn…don’t let those alarm bells of yours go off again…I’ve just been so busy.

  You said, It was another week that was more than haphazard.

  You said you thought that having a gap in our communication might actually help me get on with my writing.

  You said, I never intended to be out of touch for so long…but time just went whooshing by…and things happened…

  I said, What things?

  You said, I do sincerely apologize for my scattered behavior…I am running on adrenaline these days.

  You said, I feel like that cat on a hot tin roof…jumping from one thing to another all the time. Hopefully I can get back to some regularity here soon.

  I did not say, You know they have effective laxatives for that these days.

  You said, Getting back on track in communicating with you is so very important for my heart and soul. I promise I will write to you this weekend…if I have the space and time…

  Many days passed.

  I said, Apparently you have neither the space nor the time.

  I said, I am so frustrated that I feel like I might as well be living in Siberia instead of just a couple of hours down the road.

  I did not say, I’m sure that even in Siberia they have reliable e-mail by now. In the past month, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I have received e-mails from Moscow, Kyoto, Oslo, a campground in the northern Wisconsin woods, a beach in Bermuda, and a ship traversing Davis Strait from the west coast of Greenland to the east coast of Baffin Island.

  You said you knew your inability to communicate at times was frustrating and annoying for me, but that you were always thinking of me. You said that even when you weren’t able to be in touch, still you loved me just as much
.

  You said, I have missed our ongoing contact so very much. But please know that my thoughts have certainly been wending their way to you.

  You said you were always sending me your love by telepathy. I said, That’s nice, but, at this end, my telepathy isn’t working.

  You said you could understand why I was angry. You said you were sorry for causing me concern and disruption and stress. You said you loved me so much and never wanted to cause me any worry or anxiety. You said you were so distressed with yourself for having done so…again.

  You said, I have never meant to hurt you…again.

  I said, I have started taking antidepressants…again.

  You said nothing about this in your reply a week later. You wrote instead about the twenty-four different projects you were now working on, about a horrific car accident you’d seen on the way to work yesterday but fortunately nobody was seriously injured although this was hard to believe considering the look of the mangled wreckage, about a young man with dreadlocks you’d met in the park during your lunch-hour walk and he was carrying a binder filled with all the lyrics of Bob Marley written out by hand and he had memorized every single one of them!

  You said, You will be pleased to know that this week I reorganized all my files…they were such an embarrassment! You said you’d followed the system I’d suggested months ago. You said how good it felt to have this finally done. You said, You always were a genius at organization! I am now looking at a neat row of gleaming banker’s boxes…I can only say…what a relief!

  You pledged that you would be better at communication from now on.

  You promised.

  You said you truly wanted to renew meaningful and consistent contact with me.

  You said you were so sorry for hurting me, but you needed a bit more understanding.

  I did not say, How the hell do you expect me to understand? Most of what you say to me is so oblique and ambiguous and indirect that afterwards I don’t know what you’ve really said anyway.

  I did not say, I have been turning myself inside out and upside down trying to understand…enough already.

  I said, All is forgiven.

  Again.

  I am thinking about that old saying, the curse of the lovelorn: “Hope springs eternal.”

  I’ve looked it up and discovered that this is originally from Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on Man”: Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest.

  This was written in 1733, almost three centuries ago. And yet, old as it may be, still it is predated by another saying, this one from the Bible, Proverbs 13:12: Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.

  My friend Lorraine has a saying on this topic too: “I’ve given up all hope and I feel a lot better now.” This is what I am currently striving for. So far it isn’t working.

  Interestingly enough, it was also Alexander Pope who wrote, Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

  After all your problems with computers and telephones, I wanted to make it as easy as possible for you to be in touch with me. So I bought a book of postcards, thirty historical views of your city rendered in sepia tones. I put a stamp on each postcard and carefully printed my own name and address in the space below. I thought this was very clever. I gave the postcard book to you as a gift.

  We were in the lobby of the luxury hotel at the time. Marble floors, mahogany walls, antique end tables, richly upholstered sofas and chairs, a crystal chandelier the size of a small car sparkling down upon well-dressed men and women going about their business with aplomb.

  We were admiring a series of photographic portraits of famous people that were hung around the lobby. You stared thoughtfully for a long time at a photo of Georgia O’Keeffe. I began to chatter on about a lengthy biography of her I’d once read and how much I’d always loved her paintings.

  You said, It’s a wonder nobody tries to steal these.

  I said, They’re bolted to the wall.

  We sat down on one of the elegant sofas. I pulled the postcard book from my bag and handed it to you.

  I said, When you’re not able to send me an e-mail or call me, now you can send me a postcard instead!

  You were silent. You looked through the cards carefully, examining each photograph slowly and in detail, as if that were the point of it: the pictures.

  Finally, you put them in your briefcase and said, What exactly are you going to do with these postcards when I send them?

  As if you thought I was going to run all over town with them or have them printed in the newspaper or posted on the Internet or something.

  You said, Are you going to put them on the fridge?

  I said, No.

  I received three postcards from you in the following month and then no more. Kate and I joked that, just as your city was short on pay phones, apparently there were no mailboxes there either.

  I teased you about this. I said, You know those big red square metal things frequently located on street corners…find one!

  You said you loved the pictures on the postcards so much that you wanted to keep them for yourself.

  I said, For me, any day that I hear from you is automatically a better day than one in which I don’t.

  The next day, you sent me a long cheery e-mail about all your future plans, hopes and dreams, prospects and possibilities.

  You said, I have such a strong inner drive to accomplish so much.

  I could not help but notice that apparently you thought you were going to live forever.

  I could not help but notice that I did not appear in any of this.

  (I also could not help but notice that, in this case, not hearing from you would have made for a better day after all.)

  I said, When I allow myself to look into the future, you are always there front and center.

  You said, It is important to focus on the here-and-now, to take it one day at a time, so let’s stay on that track…

  You said, It is a step-by-step process.

  Sometimes I tried not to write to you so often. At one point, I checked back through the growing stack of our correspondence and discovered that, since we’d spent that first night together at the luxury hotel, the longest I’d gone without writing to you was six days. I figured that if I didn’t write so often, this would give you time to miss me.

  I wanted you to have some sense of what it felt like to be the one waiting. I thought it would do you good to suffer a bit, as I’d been suffering. I thought you would appreciate me more if I wasn’t always right there chirping away at you, regular as rain. I thought you might actually pay more attention to me if you thought you might lose me.

  At the time, I thought that if I wasn’t always so reliable and predictable, you would actually notice.

  Now I think: If you did notice, you were probably relieved.

  I said, It is not good for me to be feeling that I am always last on your list of things to do. And that I am always the one thing that can be dispensed with.

  You did not reply.

  I said, It is not good for me to be feeling that I am no longer even on your list of things to do.

  You said, My days seem to shift like blowing dune sand on a windswept Atlantic shore…

  I said, Although you are the most important thing in my life right now, I often feel that I am just a speck in yours.

  You said, You are not a speck.

  I said, It seems the only time I can get your attention is when I’m freaking out.

  You did not reply.

  I said, It seems that even when I’m freaking out, still I cannot get your attention anymore.

  You did not reply.

  I said, I need some reassurance from you, and I need it now. You said a while back that we were in this together. But now I feel like I’m in this all by myself. This seems like cruel and unusual punishment to me. Right now I just want to hear you talk. About anything. It doesn’t matter what. We don’t have to talk about anything emotional or upsetting. I just need to hear your
voice.

  You said, I can appreciate everything you say. Yes, we are overdue for a phone call. I long to hear your voice too. I will hopefully get back to you later.

  By this point, I had already learned that when you said “hopefully,” chances were it would never happen.

  By this point, I had finally realized that you were never going to learn how to use the word hopefully correctly.

  By this point, I was beginning to see that you were not so unpredictable after all.

  I am thinking about how you were always saying:

  This has been a blur of a week.

  Another week…another blur of activities.

  This has been a blur of a month.

  These past few months have been a blur.

  You said, Migosh, how time has zipped by! Working extra hours at both ends of the day, my life has become a blur…full, but chaotic!

  I am thinking about how you once said that we existed in such different worlds. This had bothered me.

  At the time, I said, No, I don’t think so. I think we just happen to live in different parts of the same world.

  Now I say: Yes, we do live in different worlds. Yours is much blurrier than mine. Perhaps you need glasses.

  Sometimes the newspaper horoscopes, like the crossword puzzle clues, seemed to be uncannily applicable to our situation.

  YOURS: As the sun moves into one of the more sensitive areas of your chart today, you must expect some people in your life to be more touchy than usual. You will be touchy too, so try not to overreact to what you perceive to be other people’s obstinacy and ill-humor.

  YOURS: You will amaze friends and even family members who thought they knew everything about you. Whatever you get up to this week, it will change the way other people look at you, and maybe even the way you look at yourself.

  MINE: You may want to give someone who has let you down a second chance, but is that really such a good idea? It is important that you are able to trust people, and the sad fact is that this is not the first time this person has failed to deliver. If you do give them another chance, make sure they know that this time it really is all or nothing.