It’s Just A Phone!

You were just a little boy…perhaps only 5 or 6 years old…a curious, precious, and careful child. You were the one that took care of your toys. Perhaps because there wasn’t too many that your parents could afford at that time. Your dinky cars! You wouldn’t throw them around and let nicks and scratches mark their their shiny bodies. These were real to you and once something was entrusted to you, you took care of it.

Like the way you take care of me! It is interesting you would marry someone careless, klutzy and yes…unmindful in the most unmindful of ways at times. Yet, you try to create order and sanity for me and around me. Perhaps you hope to keep me sane, balanced and in control. You do all this with kind intentions I am sure! Yet, very few of the seeds of orderliness and caution you hoped to nurture in me actually took to soil and sprouted over the years. You cannot create order out of chaos. Have you not noticed that while you are busy drawing your chalk lines to keep us in, I have been erasing them to get out? Perhaps we are the perfect balance between order and disorder, chaos and rigidity!

So who was it that took it away the things that you loved so much?

Was it your mother caught up in the stress of getting her work done to meet her boss’s deadline and not having the time or patience to deal with the curiosity of a little boy? Was it your father who was trying to get sleep between two jobs and annoyed that you were not quiet enough? Perhaps your uncle downstairs who was tired of hearing little feet run across the living room for the 20^th time in an hour. The things that you never let get out of your sight. That you spent countless hours playing with. Perhaps they were your most precious of belongings. Was it taken right in front of you as you watched with horror and humiliation and begged for mercy? “Yes, I am bad. I am powerless. I am weak. I will do anything you want. Take anything else but this. Please!” Were these the words and thoughts going through your mind?

Or, was it taken in revenge, anger to teach you a lesson you would never forget?

Perhaps, it was taken while you were sleeping or at school? As if it had never been there and never existed. Just a fantasy you might get yourself to believe to soothe away the pain.

I did not mean to drop your phone, or for it to get scratched! It was an accident! Yes, a careless one perhaps. I am known to be careless, absent minded and for half a nanosecond before you handed me your phone …I am sure of it…you hesitated. You always do. I smell it…the hesitation. My nerves and cells cringe at the rejection. I used to think that you didn’t want me to see your emails or texts and perhaps you were hiding something from me. Perhaps it was that you did not trust me with your stuff.

Is that the angry little 5 year old in you?

Will she take care of it? Can I trust her? Can I trust anyone? Then realization. I am 37. This is my wife and I cannot, not, let her use my phone.

Milliseconds, nanoseconds feel like eternity for me to read you and for you to read me. Only parts of us in the present moment. The rest, trapped in the maze of childhood and history. We act as though we are here, dealing with the simple question of me asking you to use your phone. Yet the wounds from our entire lives are out on display, raw and burning…wanting our attention…our affection. We can get hurt or even worse; we can wall ourselves in structures stronger than metal or concrete, thinking we are safe!

“It is just a phone! It was an accident!”

I can’t believe he won’t accept my apology or wait …did I apologize?  I thought I did. Even if I did not, he should have understood how bad I feel. He should have said, “Its ok honey. It’s only a phone!”

He’s quiet.

I am quiet.

He sulks with bottled up anger and I fume with unexpressed rage or is it guilt… or perhaps even rejection or all three!

I am your wife! I made a mistake! I apologized for it and offered a solution and you are still mad, still sulking. You don’t love me! You never have! You think I am an idiot! Cannot be responsible or trusted to take care of anything! You should never have given me that fucking phone!

I should never have asked to use it. That’s right. I never will ask to use it again. Won’t you feel sorry for treating me like this then!

“What’s the matter now?”

“I am hurt ok! I take care of my things. Did I take it out on you? I am quiet. Can’t I take some time to get over it? I don’t want your scratched up, banged up, dusty with crumbs and coffee stained phone OK! I just want to sulk and be left alone. Now why are you mad and sleeping here?”

And so we dance…back and forth. At times changing tunes and playing different roles. The games we found ourselves in as children without  power. Hurt, beaten, mocked, embarrassed, hit at times, beaten with slippers and other handy things…raped!  The games seem different, the rules are constantly changing, and us…we are struggling to learn to play and continue even when crushed again and again.

But we made it right! Look at us now. Our toys are intact. Wait! We have more toys now. Our own houses, cars, yesterdays shopping spree…no one can take away the material or the intimate from us now. We accumulate more and more and more. We are in charge. No one can whip, or rape or beat us into submission.

There are no new games… just old ones. We are the players, the played and the game! And, we don’t even know it!

The above story came to me one day after a silly fight between my husband and I. None of it is true in the sense that I don’t know if it happened, but then again all of it could be true as well… I find it fascinating that things are never what they seem to be on the surface. People, situations or things that may trigger us in a particular moment often tend to have deep roots to other places and times…Some people call these implicit memories…what we don’t know, knows us all too well…and is always trying to get our attention one way, or another. If we notice the triggers long enough to pause without getting carried away by the storm…we can use them as clues and markers to find our way back to the source.