The Future Tense, Or The Conditional.

I was chatting with E earlier, and I think I might have figure out the other half of what I was trying to say about my husband's use of language. Even when he's doing well...when he's not in active addiction, when he's working on himself and really trying to do the right thing as much as he possibly can...he only is able to speak about the future, the past, and the maybes. His mind is never in this moment. It's in the past. It's in the future. It's in that impossible conditional tense...the could, the should, the would. The but what if I had or the but what if maybe one day I can...

I was just posting on my Second Road blog about his ranting last night, for instance:

"What have I been doing? Do I just not care about anything? I don't even care about myself. Why have I just been letting you take care of me? What have I been doing? I'm almost 30, and I don't even exist. If you left me, I wouldn't exist. Nobody would even notice if I disappeared except you and my family, eventually. What have I been doing? I've got to change everything...everything."

It is sad how right he is in many ways...he doesn't exist to many people. In actuality, on a day-to-day basis, he only exists to me right now. I see him and touch him and speak with him. He has family, too, and they talk to him some. Other than us, though, he is not making much of an impact on the world right now. He exists virtually, too, through me. He exists through the things I write about him and the people who hear me speak about him. But he doesn't have much of his own, not now. Not here, today. He doesn't have a driver's license. He doesn't have a Social Security card. He doesn't have a job. He doesn't have a bill in his own name. He isn't real anymore.

And his words reflect that lack of stasis, that lack of balance. He was a person some years ago, and he might be again in the future. Today, he is plans. Today he is what he was. His words are full of empty spaces, and it makes me feel sad.

Sad and distracted. Sad for him, and distracted from this work I'm doing for me. I'm working really hard to keep myself here, now. I'm not meant to think of what I could have done, or what I might do. I'm trying to think of today, this minute. If I think of the past, I resent and regret. If I think of the future, I fear. If I stay in today, then I am comfortable...I begin to find peace.

Here's an example conversation:

Him: Do you think we should stay in this town?

Me: I don't know. If I find a good job here, I will stay here. If I keep having crappy jobs, then yes, I'd like to move somewhere with a good job.

Him: But where do you want to be? If you could be anywhere? Where would you go with me if we could go wherever we wanted?

Me: I'd go somewhere with a good job.

Him: No! I mean, if you could pick...if you could be anything you wanted and go anywhere you wanted...like would you like the beach? What about a big city? You like big cities...

Me: It's more important to me that I have a good job with benefits than that I live somewhere exciting now. Is there somewhere you'd like to go?

Him: Can't you just daydream?

Me: You daydream. Where would you like to live?

Him: I don't know. You like the mountains, don't you? Maybe we could live in the mountains. Maybe if we lived in the mountains, I could get a job working outside. We could start over, and I could be different...

There, now. I feel better for having been so thoroughly unclear. I think I haven't really explained the other half. I think I've only explained another part, because there is something more, too. There is something about how I am left to do all the thinking, and I'm left feeling singularly unimaginative when speaking against someone building himself from the ground up. I guess there will be an Addict Language, Part III coming soon...or maybe not.

Art By Chris Buzelli

Airy Nothing.

And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

-Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream

I've been trying to find the right words to explain the differences between the way my husband uses language and the way that I use language. I've Googled it, and done my nerdy research thing that I do when something is confusing and fascinating at the same time, but I can't quite put my finger on the right words to explain the differences in how we use our words.

Which, in some ways, is an excellent example of how I use words. I seek them out. I look for just the right words to explain something that I believe to be true. I've observed something again and again in my husband's use of words, and I want to find just the right way to say it, to write it down here, to explain it to myself and to the people I'm explaining to and to him. There is a thing that I believe, and I want to find the right words to represent the thing that I believe. Words are representational in my mind...and it's my job as a writer, or as a communicator in general, to make the words that I write or say match as closely as possible the image, idea, or event that exists in my mind.

Something else happens when my husband uses words, especially when he's in active addiction. Almost every time he opens his mouth to speak, there is an outcome that he is trying to achieve. There is a goal (obtaining money, sympathy, drugs, space and time to use drugs, etc.), and he sets about matching words to the scenarios he believes will make that goal happen. His language is rarely representational in the most basic sense...he is seldom trying to express a copy of an image, idea, or even what already exists in the present moment. He is creating future moments with his words, plotting schemes and manipulating emotions by tossing words around that have no referents.

Does that make sense? (I find myself asking that question all the time. My first therapist ever asked me again and again, "Does that make sense? Do you understand what I'm saying?" Something about the phrase has stuck with me. Probably, it stuck because it's important to me that my words really are representational, that you read and understand something very close to what I'm understanding when I write. I want to know if I've written something plainly, clearly, and in a manner that is interpretable by the person on the other end of the writing. Does that make sense?)

That said, being someone who loves words, who values their power in bridging the gaps between people, who works hard to make sure that what I write or say matches up as closely as possible with what I understand or intend...my husband's strange use of words drives me mad. I often find myself digging into his words, tossing them over, trying to predict what it is he is attempting to root out of me, what response he's beckoning. It's a habit I've formed through the years of being manipulated. It's a useless habit, really. I know the things he's trying to get from me when he's weaving a word web...he wants to use. I waste my time in trying to predict, to decode, to understand or interpret or figure out the hidden truth.

I have more to say about addict language, but I'm not sure what else there is I mean...I'm opening comments so you can tell me what it is I'm talking about.