Einsturtz: Teil 1

We were at the train station for maybe 30 minutes, with no train arrivals, when I saw her coming down the parking lot. As we pulled the car up near her, she collapsed to the ground wailing like a banshee. I tried to comfort her, but as I saw it, she waved me away with her arm. Miscommunication, misread, whatever.

Kess was non-verbal for about 2 hours, and attempts to communicate with her on any level failed.

As it happens the train station was maybe a couple hundred yards from convention central. After waiting at the station for Drae and myself for a while, she began to become fatalistic, and convinced that we had either abandoned her there to rot, or had died horribly on the road somewhere just to spite her.

Meanwhile, three hours before alles sturtzt ein, I was reminding myself to check in with home base incase of early arrival, and marking the time to arrived at the train station a bit before 4:00 PM in order be certain to pick her up on time. Everything appeared to be going according to plan.

So, needless to say, I was a bit surprised to discover that she had arrived at 12:30. I was horrified to watch a woman that I had long thought of as a pillar of strength and self-possession collapse to her knees in the middle of a parking lot for no known reason.

She could not speak a comprehensible word, and when she did, it was to say that she wanted to get in the car and go home. For over an hour, she said nothing that I could understand well enough to grasp her meaning... except that something was clearly my fault.

Eventually, I got the story out of her. And what it came down to was a cluster-fuck of miscommunication. It was unpretty, uncool, and extremely frustrating to have to soak the blame for "failing to pick her up on time" when in fact the whole incident stemmed from confusion relating to a discussion five nights earlier, in which she said she wanted to come back in the middle of the afternoon, leaving NYC around 3. I had said that I wanted to get home early enough to ensure that everyone would get some sleep, and Drae and I could make and hour or so of our D&D game up the way. Then I acceded to her plan, and figured that as long as we were home by 10:00 PM, it would be fine. I apparently didn't accede with proper kowtowing to her will, and therefore she didn't absorb the fact that as usual, pitching a fit results in me giving up on a point, just to avoid having to deal with protracted grumpiness.

These miscommunications seem to occur very frequently. In fact, they are one of the common features of our daily life. Something always gets lost in translation- I feel unappreciated, Kess feels lonely and unloved, Drae feels trapped... or at least, I think she does.

Sunday makes for a good, if extreme, example of the way that this relationship has been going lately. Basic everyday fuck ups become blown out of all proportion, and everything becomes a source of terror for one of us. I don't know if I can keep fighting the fight. Sometimes, I think that I'm the only one who's really trying to find a solution: Drae has a history of relationship troubles that make the situation absolutely terrifying for her when things aren't going well, and she retreats into fantasy worlds either on the computer or by other means. Kess becomes angry and withdrawn, and allows her fears to immobilize her, making forward motion impossible and causing her to lash out to defend her stagnation inappropriately.

I'm worried about all of us. But only Kess shows signs of breaking completely. and that frightens me. a lot.