Hands

My wife, who struggles with her MS is seeing a new counsellor. The counsellor has told my wife that she tries to get her clients to focus on when they were stronger and try and capture that person again. It is late at night. It’s been a long day. My wife has been exhausted all day long but has still perservered. She is having trouble seeing her own strength.

She feels guilt, she says, because she used to be “good at everything, and now she is good at nothing.” I point out that the things that she was exceptional at (study and career) are things that she no longer wants to do anyway. Even if she could do those things, she wouldn’t want to. She means, she says, she wants to paint the window skirtings but she physically can’t.

This is where our argument begins. I say this is not what she said to me. I say she said she can’t do the things that she was good at. I tell her she was never good at painting window skirtings. I’m attempting to be funny, to lighten her mood but she’s not in the right frame of mind and although she doesn’t take it the wrong way this time, her demeanor rapidly goes down hill anyway. She says she wants some control in her life, and that she wants us to work together on our farm and in our relationship. She’s exhausted and now she’s frustrated.

She was good at horse riding, she says, and now she can’t ride a horse. I tell her that she doesn’t need to feel guilt about that as she has joined Riding for the Disabled - they just didn’t have a horse that was suited to her current weight. I tell her she is losing weight, going to exercise classes, keeping to her diet and is on target to lose the extra weight and then Riding for the Disabled will help her relearn to ride a horse and she doesn’t need to feel guilt. She starts to cry.

Her hand won’t work, she says, she’s always dropping things. I tell her I am always dropping things. It’s not the same, she says, her hand won’t work. I tell her at least she has an excuse for being clumsy. She sobs and slams her forearm into her thigh. The hand won’t work, she cries. Trying to dehumanise it, to be rid of it, to distance herself from it, but she can’t. It’s still her hand. Still a part of her.

I’m exhausted too and sometimes I lose my cool around these times. But thankfully I see that she is not in the right frame of mind. I see just how tired she is. And honestly, it feels good that she’s attacking herself instead of me. This I can deal with. This I can cut off and stop from escalating. I am in no way a control freak nor am I a controlling person. I am the opposite of all those things. But this I can control.

It is time for her to go to bed and get some sleep, I tell her, she is tired and is suffering warped thinking. She needs some rest, I say, she’s had a long day and she’s not thinking straight. I tell her that I still love her. It’s our refrain. I still love you. I tell her I will sleep on the couch in the lounge room so I will wake up when our young children get up, so she can sleep in and they won’t get up to mischief (I work early mornings during the week and am gone before they get up so mornings can be stressful for her. One of our differences in life is that I am incredibly hard to get out of bed once I am in it, and so I have taken to sleeping on the couch on weekends so that she will not be forced to get up).

She loves me, she says. She says it all the time. I haven’t been looking at her for a while and I see that her eyes are red and puffy. I’m almost surprised. I missed her tears this time, but at least she hasn’t stormed out still crying.

It feels good to talk calmly, think calmly and act calmly in situations like this one. It is a relief and by being so by-the-book pragmatic it almost feels like I have solved the problem, could solve all our problems, even though I know I haven’t and I can’t. If only all our interactions could be treated so rationally, so calmly.

Tomorrow, we are going to plant some trees with our kids on our property. This is something we’re all good at. It’s something we’ll all feel good about.