I think one of the most insensitive things you could say to someone is “I understand.” Even if we have gone through something similar, we do not know how someone is feeling on the inside. You do not understand because you are not that person. So here I go, on an effort to explain how I understand.
Three years ago I lost my grandmother, who I called Nana. She was diagnosed with pretty severe pancreatic cancer, I moved up to northern California to take care of her, and three months later she passed. I did not realize it at the time, but this was pretty difficult for me to handle. I came back to Las Vegas and started to get my life back on track. I started spending a lot more time with a new friend, we will call her H, and was really excited about my future. About a month had passed and one Wednesday, I got a text that H had passed in a plane accident. This was the first time news of someone’s death stopped me in my tracks. I have lost friends and loved ones many times before but for some reason, hearing this was the hardest one for me. A few days pass, and H’s funeral comes. It was a Friday afternoon and as soon as it was over, I had to pack my car and head straight to Northern California to pick up some things from Nana’s house. I was a few hours into my drive and I became overwhelmed with emotions. I started crying intensely. I reached for my phone to call Nana. Whenever there was anything wrong, whenever I had a big decision to make, whenever I just needed company, she was the one I would call. So it hit me, I will never be able to talk to her again. Almost immediately, I became so distraught that I knew I was going to be sick. I pulled over and vomited for around 20minutes before finishing the rest of my drive.
Fast forward a few months and I find myself back in Las Vegas and I am dating someone that I had an on and off relationship with for years. We will call her J. I was in a very strange part of my life. I was finishing up my masters degree along with working long hours on the startup company I now manage. I don’t know if it was all of the distractions or the fact that I didn't feel the right to be sad, but I never addressed the depression that was growing inside me. I was the most unaware someone has ever been of their own emotions and I was so clumsy with how I let it affect those around me, especially J. Something strange happens when someone you love is depressed, it is exacerbated when you live with that person. You do everything you can to try and make them feel better and when you fail, it is almost impossible to not take it personally. When you dedicate so much effort to something and get the opposite result of your intention, you feel like a failure. When it becomes your life’s focus to make someone happy and then they aren’t, you start to second guess your own worth. J tried everything to make me happier and was met with a cynical, depressed asshole. As a result, J started to base her self worth on my approval, which in turn annoyed me ever more. Very few things brought me joy but when she saw me happy and enjoying myself with others and coming home and treating her poorly, she took it as an insult. And how could she not? Consequently, from my point of view, it seemed like she was making my problems about her. There was this overwhelming pressure that her happiness was dependent on me when I was not in a place to support her. Slowly her efforts turned from trying to make me feel better to trying to get me to notice and appreciate her. The harder she tried, the less I wanted her around. She became depressed and began to resent me for making her feel that way. At the time, all I wanted was to be left alone and all she wanted was my attention. After both of us found therapists, we decided to separate and were able to move on from this toxic relationship.
I once again fast forward. This time to the present. I am proud to say I am happily married to the love of my life. We will call her E. While I am confident in saying that these past two years have been the best of each of our lives, the past six months have presented some difficult times. E was as close, if not closer to her grandfather than I ever was to Nana and earlier this year she got the call that he also was entering a battle with cancer. She immediately dropped everything and went to help. She spent months taking him to doctors appointments, making him food, and also spending time with a dying man’s wife and daughter. The last weeks of his life were spent in a hospice facility with his family watching the man they loved starve himself to death. I will never “understand” how E felt and honestly, I never want to. I can only imagine the pain of watching the person you’ve loved most and the longest deteriorate in front of you. Even then, E continued to be the most considerate and caring person. She was strong for her grandma, she was strong for her aunt, she was strong for her father and it embarrasses me to say it, but she was strong for me. Once he passed, life started to come back to normal here in Las Vegas. Business was great for the both of us and we were doing a lot of traveling. E had her moments of sadness but really seemed pretty unaffected by this loss. Right on cue, just a few months later she gets a call that her cousin had overdosed on heroin and died. She stood in our kitchen as she answered the call. She hung up, told me what happened and immediately started thinking of what she needed to do to help her family that was grieving. This continued for the next week, never thinking about herself, only thinking of how she could help those around her.
Even through these tragedies, E continues to run a successful business and maintain the home we live in. But there is no denying these past six months have taken its toll on her. On top of that, she has dealt with her own battle of covid-19 and the prolonged effects after. So here is where I come in. My wife is sad. My wife is sick. All of my attention and focus has been directed towards getting her back to a happy state. But no matter how much time and effort I dedicate to it, I cannot fix the root cause of her issues. And just like J did before, I have been taking it personally. I have felt under-appreciated, undesired and under loved. And when I feel like this, I look to E to make me feel better. But lucky for me, my wife is much more introspective and mature than I am. She was able to verbalize what she is feeling like i was never able to do three years ago. She showed me the pressure I am putting on her, just like J put on me. She showed me how these problems she is facing are no reflexion of me or our relationship, just how the problems I was facing weren’t a reflection of J.
I write this today with this strange sense of understanding. I have been on both sides of a very similar situation and see the errors of my way. The one thing that is different this time, is I will do anything to support the woman I love. So just like every other post I’ve written, we arrive at the “what do I do now?” part of the story. First, I will listen. I promise to hear my wife for what she is actually saying, not taking her struggle as a reflexion of myself. Second, I will do the things that put me in a place to be supportive of my wife. Joe Rogan once had a very interesting take on MDMA. He explained that people only have so much love inside them and in order to give it out to others, there must be a surplus. Unfortunately, most of us dont have enough to serve our own needs so we dont give it away. The rest of his speech was about how MDMA can help with this but I am going to focus more long lasting sources of love. Self care is quite the buzz word but this is a situation where taking care of myself is really taking care of my wife.
So I finish with saying, I understand. And with that understanding will come empathy.
