On the morning of Wednesday, September 18, 2024, I woke up, went downstairs, and found my wife looking panicked.
Alicia told me she had an awful dream. Then she fell into my arms. As we embraced, she said she’d dreamt she couldn't find me. She called my name over and over again, but I was nowhere to be found.
The literal interpretation of the dream was obvious.
She was nervous about flying later that day. Nervous about going home to see her family of origin. Nervous about leaving behind our beloved border terrier, Kingsly, who follows Alicia around everywhere. And nervous about being separated from me for seven days.
“When was the last time we spent an entire week apart?” I asked.
After a brief debate, we determined it had almost been two years, when I did the longest leg of the We Are The Light book tour. Since we were married in 1997, there probably haven’t been sixty days when we didn’t spend at least some time together. Less than sixty days in more than twenty-seven years.
There have been many days lately when Alicia is the only person with whom this writer has had a face-to-face conversation. Since we met in 1993, we’ve become fused in a way that makes separations dramatic for both of us.
When I was younger, I found our intense bond romantic. Alicia and I seemed destined to be together. Fated to become one thing. “A nation of two,” Vonnegut once called it. My analyst has said that—as teenagers—Alicia and I learned how to be psychological livers for each other’s traumas, processing what the other could not.
I still think ours is a beautiful romance, but as we are both in Jungian analysis these days, we’ve each been deeply pondering the concept of individuation—rediscovering who we were born to be, free of outside influences, and the preferences of others, including spouses. And I’m starting to believe that love is letting others express the pure truth of their souls, regardless of where it may take the relationship. It’s not merging with others, but allowing others full access to who you innately and independently are. And tolerating the same from them.
The problem is that many of us were forced long ago to abandon our most inherent characteristics in efforts to protect ourselves, lessen the pain in our lives, and/or please loved ones and superiors. Midlife is often the time of remedying all that.
It took Alicia and me almost two hours to drive from Beaufort to the Charleston airport. On the way we listened to the calming sounds of Jónsi’s latest instrumental album First Light.
“Will you take Kingsly to see Ellie at three?” Alicia asked just before we arrived.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll be tired after four hours of driving. And I want to do some writing today.”
“Just go,” Alicia said. “It will make Chris so happy and it will be good for you.”
“Why good for me?”
“Because you need more joy in your life.”
“You’re all the joy I require, baby,” I said to Alicia.
When I glanced over, she rolled her eyes and smiled. I took her hand in mine.
At the departing flights drop-off curb, we had to double park, so our airport goodbye was rushed. I lifted her suitcase from the back of our RAV4 and then we kissed and hugged for as long as you can while blocking other cars with the engine still running. We told each other, “I love you,” and then Alicia was waving as I was driving away.
On the ride home, I talked on the phone with another writer about a Hollywood opportunity that has come his way. And I told him about the very famous movie star who had just exited my project rather unceremoniously, as Hollywood actors tend to do. We talked about whether it was better to be appreciative and flexible in Hollywood or savvy and contract focused. Should you do spec work? Or should you demand to be paid for everything you write? There were successful writers we knew who said one thing and successful writers we knew who said the opposite. We went round and round, trying to find a sweet compromise, but mostly just did our best to quiet each other’s neuroses. The longer I work in the business, the more certain I am that there is no “secret sauce.” That’s what my analyst calls the imaginary surefire method I am always trying to discover. “The secret sauce.” These days, I’m starting to believe that all successes in the arts are in one way or another happy accidents. But it can help to spend time discussing these things with people who are as tortured as you are by the business of selling one’s art.
When I got home and opened our bedroom door, Kingsly—who is not used to spending much time alone—emerged like he’d been fired out of a cannon. Then he searched the entire house for Alicia. When he didn’t find her, he looked up at me with his head cocked and his eyebrows lifted.
“She went to see her Mom and Dad,” I told him. “She told you. Remember?”
He twisted his head, so that one ear fell and the other rose, as if to repeat the question.
“Come on,” I said. “You must have to pee.”
Just as soon as we were outside, Kingsly began to pull me across the street to his girlfriend Ellie’s house, which is owned by a lovely former bookstore owner, who now makes jewelry in a spare bedroom. Alicia and Kingsly go to Chris’s house every day at three PM for doggie playdate.
When Chris opened the door, she smiled and said, “Oh, I didn’t know if you would come. Ellie’s so glad you’re here!”
Kingsly went straight for the toy basket and then Chris sat on the floor and began firing little rubber squeakers and stuffed animals all over the living room. Ellie—who looks like a cross between a border terrier and the sweetest lamb you ever saw—prefers chasing the stuffed crabs and monkey, while our maniac loves the squeaking circles.
“Did Alicia tell you about Kingsly’s special trick?” Chris said, and then tossed a little pink squeaker in the air.
When Kingsly caught it in his teeth, Chris clapped and said, “He’s gotten so good at that!”
I was on the floor by this point, petting Ellie, who kept nuzzling up against me between each chase, dropping little stuffed animals in my lap.
I was surprised by how quickly I’d fallen into my wife’s routine—how at home I felt on my neighbor’s carpet, tossing dog toys. As Chris and I talked about Alicia, it quickly became apparent that they have developed a special intimacy via doggie playdate. Chris knew many things about my wife and seemed to care deeply for her, which I found comforting.
“I’ve never had a dog who had a best friend before,” Chris said, as we watched Ellie and Kingsly zoom around the couches.
I smiled and nodded.
After we had put all the toys back in the basket, Kingsly ran into the kitchen.
“They split a cookie after their date,” Chris explained.
She broke a large biscuit in half and put the two pieces on the floor. Ellie and Kingsly made quick work of those.
As I made my way back across the street to our house, I realized I was smiling. Doggie playdate had indeed given me joy. I was already looking forward to it the next day. And I thought, Is this what it’s like to be Alicia?
Later that afternoon, Kingsly and I went for a long walk around a nearby neighborhood.
When I arrived home again, I had to cook my own dinner. I found myself talking to Kingsly, saying things like, “She’ll only be gone for a week. Don’t worry.”
Usually, I run in the late afternoon. And when I come home, the delicious smell of whatever healthy meal Alicia is preparing will be wafting out of the stove vent and across our backyard. Nothing says home and love more than the moment when I pause by the backdoor to savor the smells of my wife preparing dinner.
But on this night, I myself had to heat up a pot of canned vegetarian vegetable soup garnished with saltine crackers. When I sat down to slurp from my bowl, the house was so quiet my ears were ringing. I put on a podcast just for the company.
After dinner, I watched a movie with Kingsly. Yorgos Lanthimos’s Alps. It’s about a group of four people—maybe even a small cult?—who hire themselves out as pretend replacements for recently deceased loved ones. They study the dead by interviewing the living, put on the deceased’s clothes, and then act out scenes from the grieving person’s memory. It was a strange film to watch alone, and with my wife so far away. I didn't think that hiring someone to play Alicia would do anything for me in my current situation, unless the actor happened to be good at grocery shopping and cooking delicious healthy meals. Maybe also cleaning the house and walking the dog whenever I was too busy writing. Perhaps editing Substack pieces. I could see the utility in those things. I couldn’t imagine allowing a stranger to do anything more intimate, like act out memories with me. But Alicia wasn’t dead and the people in the film were absurdly recreating the past, with little regard for believability. In some cases, they were performing the most unpleasant of memories. And it was hard to understand what the point of those were. I ended up thinking maybe it was about processing trauma in all its many forms. Playacting memories as a means of ameliorating psychological indigestion. But there was a sadistic streak in there, both amongst the actors playing the dead and the people hiring them. Many of the scenes deteriorated into physical and/or psychological violence. It was a dark film that made me a little sad. But it seemed to underscore the futility of hiring replacements for missing loved ones.
I had to take Kingsly out for his last pee of the night. Then I brushed his teeth with meat-flavored toothpaste. Both Alicia duties. There were so many little things that I had to do when she wasn’t around. I didn’t mind completing these tasks so much as I missed my wife.
Getting into an empty bed was worst of all. We have a king-sized mattress, but Alicia migrates when she sleeps, invading my space and sending unconscious kicks and shoves my way, so I make her start at her edge, far away from me, and mostly try to avoid her very active limbs when she is resting. She is also always hot and I am always cold these days. It used to be the opposite when we were younger. But now I sleep with an extra blanket and shiver all night long, after having conceded the thermostat war long ago, bargaining for peace elsewhere in our marriage. Through the night, Alicia also hugs an extra pillow, which acts as buffer, keeping our torsos separate, so there isn’t much chance of snuggling. Even still, alone in bed that evening—instead of enjoying the warmer temperature and assault-free sleeping—I felt a horrible loneliness, which kept me from dozing off for at least an hour.
I woke up in the middle of the night and reached over for Alicia, but she wasn’t there. It took me a second to remember where she was. Then I just stared up into the darkness, wondering why the famous actor had exited my movie project without the courtesy of even an explanatory text message. I also wondered how many years I had left to live. And if I would be able to write a worthy memoir, fulfilling the contract I signed. When all that wondering began to make me feel anxious, I tried gratitude, saying aloud, “I’m grateful for Kingsly,” whose back was warmly pressing into my stomach through his fuzzy doughnut-shaped bed and my many blankets. Under my open hand, his little chest rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and fell, rose and…
I dreamt that my Hollywood fairy godmother scheduled a meeting for me with a famous director at a posh LA restaurant. She bought me expensive clothes to wear and fancy shoes. I went to the restaurant in Los Angeles, but the director stood me up. I sat at the table alone waiting, wondering if the new clothes I was wearing were the reason the famous director did not show. I felt uncomfortable in the new threads. They were itchy, and too tight—like I was wearing the dead skin of some strange creature rather than my own.
I woke late the next morning feeling lonely and lost, like I didn’t know who I was—like I couldn’t find myself. Which is when I remembered the dream Alicia had before she left for Massachusetts.
That day at doggie playdate, after we had thrown the crabs and monkey and pink squeaky ball for a good half hour, Chris showed me her jewelry making room. She had all sorts of metals and beads and threads. Many of her pieces were on display and I was truly impressed. I asked how long it took to make one of the necklaces that caught my eye and she estimated eight hours. I asked if she factored time into the pricing and she laughed and said her sister calls what she does, “The hobby that pays for itself.” Then she said the meticulous nature of jewelry making would drive most people nuts, but she loves the process—just can’t get enough of it.
The hobby that pays for itself, I thought. There’s magic in that framing.
She said she deals with three galleries and hopes that her work sells but doesn’t rely on the income. She just wants to be able to buy more supplies and keep making jewelry.
Chris showed me a painting she somehow made using an entire pumpkin—I think maybe as a blunt paintbrush. I didn’t understand completely, but the now covered-in-paint pumpkin was on display in the living room, in addition to the corresponding painted canvas, which was hanging on the screened-in porch wall. The painting contained swirls of different greens and grays and blacks. We both agreed that there was something to it. And I loved knowing that art was happening across the street from me.
That night at my parents’ house, Kingsly and I watched the Jets take apart the Patriots on Thursday Night football. Mom was taking her blood pressure in the kitchen over and over in an effort to disprove the heart-attack assessment her doctor had given her. Not being great at night these days, Dad mostly just sat quietly in one of the leather chairs in the living room, where the game was on. He got angry whenever Kingsly tried to interact with him. And I was surprised by how much my chest ached whenever my father rebuffed my dog. The more Kingsly tried to nuzzle up to Dad, the angrier Dad got. Dad even got up at one point and stomped his way to a different seat. The metaphor was obvious—story of my life, really—but my discomfort seemed childish. Especially considering Dad’s dementia.
At halftime, Kings and I kissed my parents goodnight, did the two-minute walk home, and then checked off all the doggie bedtime things Alicia usually does, what I outlined above. And I set the thermostat to 75 rather than the 71 Alicia always insists on.
I went to sleep and woke up just a few hours later. I lay there wide awake, listening to the strange noises emerging from Kingsly, feeling his paws twitch rapidly, as if he were chasing squirrels in his dreams—and occasionally tearing their carcasses apart with ferocious glee.
Finally, I broke down and picked up my iPhone. There was an email from a new friend who has spent much time in the literary world. A senior woman, who seems wise. She had sent an old video of Sir Martin Amis mocking Robert Bly in front of a live audience at Harvard, before Amis went on to speak about the poet Philip Larkin. At the end, Robert Bly emerges from the audience to defend himself. Bly accuses Amis of father hatred, which Amis denies. Bly talks about psychic plagues. There is some debate as to whether the common man can responsibly handle the power of myth. Amis seems to say no. Bly asks if we should starve the common masses of esoteric knowledge and the rich flavor of mythology. Is it okay to psychologically starve millions?
The whole video made me angry and sad, mostly because I grew up amongst hurting common men, whom I still love dearly. And because Bly’s Iron John is very important to this middle-aged writer—who has often felt psychologically starved to the point of madness. But now I’m using the awesome life-saving powers of myth and story in an attempt to clean up my own father hatred and learn to love all of myself again—including my masculinity. And I’ve met a lot of other men who suffer greatly from father hunger, often alone, and without the ear of the powers that be or being knighted by them.
After I was done with the video, I lay in bed wondering why the famous actor—who is older than me—exited my movie project. The famous actor seemed to like me a lot when we spoke on the phone, texted, and did the Zoom meeting. He had claimed to love my work. He had said he was going to fly to Beaufort and spend time with me. He was astonishingly convincing, as famous actors are. I believed him enough to rewrite an entire script on spec, following his notes. I’d rewatched many of his old films as research. I spent a massive amount of time rewriting the role specifically for him, exactly as he wanted it to be. I wondered if he’d rebuff Kingsly should they ever meet. Then I felt foolish about the whole thing.
The next day I woke up late and thought about Alicia’s dream—the one where she couldn’t find me, no matter how hard she tried.
I’ve been working with dreams for more than four years now. My analyst and I have analyzed hundreds of mine. Jungians believe that the characters in dreams are often symbolic representations of different parts of the dreamer’s psyche. So a Jungian interpretation of Alicia’s dream self being unable to find me might sound something like this: Alicia isn’t able to find her inner Matthew—whatever I represent symbolically to her. She can’t find that part of herself. So—when we take the symbolic attitude—the dream most likely has absolutely nothing to do with me whatsoever.
I know this.
And yet, Alicia and I are so psychologically linked that we often channel and carry each other’s psychic material. This probably rescued us when we were very young and overwhelmed. But now that we are both more psychologically stable, we have begun the process of disentangling our psychic stuff.
Even still, I wondered if Alicia’s psyche was trying to tell me something via her dream.
There have been many times lately when I’ve felt like I haven’t been able to find myself. Writing a memoir has only heightened this feeling. And being without Alicia for a few days had already shown me that so much of my life is stabilized by our relationship—by her steady presence. It is a strange feeling, not knowing where one is. Needing another to act as a lighthouse of sorts, to keep him from shipwrecking on his own rocky shore as he navigates his own sea on the darkest of his own cloudy, moonless nights.
The week went on like this, with me taking care of Kingsly, visiting Chris and Ellie, and spending time with my father. In between those things, I wrote this piece, worked on my memoir, and talked to Alicia on the phone.
I told her I was writing a Substack post about her absence and she said she couldn’t wait to read it. I told her I had initially thought I’d post it as a surprise birthday present on the day she turned forty-nine, but the essay didn’t come out looking quite like a birthday present.
“What did it come out looking like?” she asked.
I thought about it and then said, “I think it might be the start of this new thing that is emerging from deep within me. Or maybe reemerging.”
“You should save it for the memoir then,” she said.
“Maybe,” I said, but I knew I wouldn’t.
I’m writing this last bit on my phone in bed. It’s 10:53 pm. Kingsly is snoozing in his fuzzy doughnut, right next to me.
During doggie playdate, Chris said Ellie also sleeps in bed with her. I wonder if they are both asleep now on the other side of the street, like a feminine mirror of Kings and me.
I’m also thinking about how it was our neighbor Cathy P’s birthday the other day, but I didn’t know it when I had seen her looking a bit dressed up on her covered porch with her adult daughter. We had had a nice brief chat and I almost asked about them being gussied up on a regular afternoon, but I didn’t. Later, Chris told me it was our neighbor’s birthday and I felt guilty for not wishing Cathy P a good trip around the sun, even though I had no idea when we had spoken that she had been born on that day. Why do I feel guilty about not knowing what I hadn’t previously been told? How can that even be possible?
My mother and father are asleep in their house just around the corner. Earlier today when I said I was having trouble sleeping, Dad proudly said, “Not me! I sleep like a baby!” It made me feel like he had beaten me in a competition, which is also ridiculous. Especially because my mother heavily medicates dad before bed. So in an official sleep competition, he’d be doping anyway.
Earlier this evening in an analytic session via Zoom, my analyst told me I have to find positive meaning in even the small things in my life, or I will get sick again. He says I have to fight hard and vigilantly or the traumatized parts of me will make everything negative. My life light will go out. I believed him when he said all that. Still do.
Tonight, I lie in bed thinking about these things, waiting for my wife to return from New England, so she can edit this essay and know in no uncertain terms where I am.
I know she will let me be here right where I need to be. That she will not interfere and try to make me be elsewhere. She will accept the strange alchemy of my inner life, even when it collides with the so-called normal-ness of everyone’s seemingly steadier outer world. Alicia will continue to love me for my oddness in a way no one else has or probably ever will. She will also walk the dog and brush his teeth with meat-flavored toothpaste. She will do doggie playdate with Chris and Ellie. She will go grocery shopping and cook dinner and clean the house. She will make our bedroom freezing cold. She will kick and shove me in her sleep. And, ironically, I will wake up less in the middle of the night, because with Alicia next to me, I will once again know where I am.
I will be with her.
And it will be enough.
PS - Did you read the November 6th post? The Terror Is Optional (Introvert's Opportunity)