I'm Sorry - I Didn't Know You Were Tired

 

I'm building the griffin puppet to take to the Infinity Con (I'll be honest - I like the attention I get when I walk around with a puppet, and people talk to me, which is nice, rather than just wandering around like some invisible ghost).  But realize that thinking about the Con also gives me a sense of guilt, which I need to write out (writing gets things out of my head somehow)

The last one I went to with Bob was in June of 2019.  He didn't particularly want to go - this is more my sort of thing.  So he said he was tired.  I didn't really want to go alone, and he didn't particularly want me to go alone.  I wanted him to want to go; he wanted me to want to stay home.  Because sometimes that's how it works with couples.

We went.  That was the first year I took a puppet, my junk post-apoc Lurlene, who freaked the hell out of people.  I had a blast.

Bob just sort of dragged around.  A friend even noticed and commented that he looked tired.  And I shrugged it off, actually a bit annoyed.  Thinking that he could at least act like he was enjoying it.

He was diagnosed a month later.

I'm so sorry, sweetheart.  I didn't know.

The problem is that was sort of Bob's modus operandi.  He took after his mother, who was practically agoraphobic.  I had to pry him to get him to go out.  So we didn't go do stuff very often, because if I'm honest, trying to goad myself is hard enough without trying to drag someone else.  So in a variation of "I had a headache" his excuse would be "I'm really tired."  Sometimes it would be - heavy sigh - "I guess we can if you really want to."  If it wasn't really important to me, I would cave and stay home (if I offered to go alone, he would come with me).  Or I would say I did really want to, in which case he would drag along.

I couldn't help but notice that he was never too tired to go to something like his scale model conventions (usually a day trip to somewhere 3-4 hours away; get up early, drive there, spend the day, get home around 9 - sometimes he went with friends, other times I would go with him) and still be excited when he got home.  Or when he was going to his high school reunions.  The "too tired" was when it was something I wanted to do that didn't interest him.

When you're in a relationship, especially for a long time, you just get used to things (which is why it wasn't until he was gone that I really noticed that he was a hoarder).  So I was used to "I'm really tired, but we can if you really want to" and then him just sort of dragging around (although sometimes when we got to wherever, he realized that is was pretty cool and would enjoy himself, especially if there were dinosaurs, or, at Ren Faires, scantily clad women).

How was I supposed to know that this time was different?  That his bone marrow had stopped producing blood cells, he was anemic, that he had leukemia, and that he really was tired?  He didn't act it at other times (that was when we were still swimming together when I got off work in the afternoons - he would get to the pool well before me so he could get a good long swim in, and we'd go eat afterwards and he'd act happy and energized).

But he really didn't want to be there, so he was tired and dragging and I was ignoring it and enjoying myself, and finally gave an annoyed "Fine!  Can I at least watch the costume competition?  You can sit down for that, and we'll skip the rest of the stuff."

Sigh.  I honestly didn't know.  And I just want to say that I'm sorry.