Likely Premonition

My friend S wanted to talk about life recently and her situation is very telling of the implications of the pandemic on our personal lives. 

It was an ordinary Tuesday. They had just returned from their post-dinner walk. Something about his kid's demeanor set her off as soon as they walked in the door. In days prior, school and colleges had closed for an indefinite period of time and people were beginning to panic about what would come next. In hindsight, nothing remarkable had happened that Tuesday. To be fair the kid had not offended her in any way - and she admits to this herself. Yet, that evening citing intolerable attitude on the part of this kid, she packed a few clothes and left immediately leaving her man dazed, sad and confused. That was the first event. It lasted a week in which time she lived alone and fairly miserable. 

By the end of the week she returned but not yet in peace. This time she wanted to leave for a longer time until something about the kid's demeanor changed. She insisted she did not wish to repeat what had happened. He wished for her to stay and resolve the issues in person - she agreed to try. In essence she was asking for impossible conditions to be fulfilled. As we recall and she admits, the kid had done no wrong by her in the first instance. What exactly would need to happen to prove that he had changed to her satisfaction ? 

Then the pandemic came and her own kids came home giving her a compelling reason to leave yet again. No time was wasted in packing for a few months as she prepared to leave. He looked at her bags as they filled up the hallway and asked Are you leaving for good? She insisted that she was not - this was just a crisis with an unknown end-date and there could be travel restrictions coming. It all made logical sense but they both sensed the signs of bigger upheaval in their personal life that they did not want to acknowledge. 

She mourns the relationship which in this period of forced isolation has come under scrutiny in ways that was not possible before. Staying apart and away allows her to observe the dramatis personae on the other side in new light - her partner of many years, his kids and their lives seen now as an outsider. She is less sure about what is next. A lot of noise that had been part of their daily routine has died down so what remains is the bare bones of a relationship that by all accounts is a good and strong one. S asked me if this is a problem she is manufacturing or one that has merely come to light like sharp rocks surfacing in low tide. Hard for an outsider to tell though logically it could be a bit of both.

When things turn to normal, what would that mean for her and them. She is not sure the kid is at all to blame for her discontent, her act of running away from it all. Whatever was suffocating her she is unwilling to admit it even to herself - blaming the kid is a safe way out of it. It preserves the integrity of her relationship by blaming an outside source for a trigger event. What if she is exhausted from being there for the man, not seeing light at the end of the tunnel, not seeing a vision of their life together, what if this is the beginning of the end. These are not possibilities she wants to consider - simply because the implications extend to the rest of her life. In times like this, S like most people wants to latch on to something which has clarity and certainty. It is easy not to want to seek premonitions.