Week 7

Nope

Pathos: According to the Oxford English Dictionary and Online Etymology Dictionary, pathos entered English in the late 16th century, derived from Greek páthos meaning suffering, feeling, emotion, or calamity.

We mostly think of pathos primarily as meaning “feeling,” particularly bad feeling.

empathy: feeling bad alongside somebody else’s suffering

sympathy: feeling bad for somebody else’s suffering

apathy: feeling nothing for somebody else’s suffering

antipathy: feeling bad things for somebody else’s something.

We get the picture.

“Pathos” is also one of three legs in Aristotle’s definition of effective argument, along with Ethos, establishing credibility, and Logos, which, duh, means persuasion through the use of evidence and reason. In order to build a strong argument you must establish credibility, use logic to convince, but also, you must get people to feel as you do. To follow your argument with their heads and their hearts. I make no argument here. I am just drowning in pathos.

WhIch brings me to the word pathetic. Which is how week 7 has been going.

It feels like a disaster. The aloneness is spreading. It has grown in volume and height; it now towers over me. And it is noisy: calamitous, I can’t hear myself think. Or think about anything besides being pathetic.

This aloneness is no longer a new thing with shining teeth, it is no longer puzzling, no longer a problem to be solved or a feeling I can dress up in metaphor or symbol. It has stripped down to just a condition to be borne. Carried. Now I begin wonder, to fear actually, that as the days and weeks go by it will become more real, more vivid, the pressure of the pain of being alone will intensify until I can’t bear it anymore. Grief is supposed to get easier. It has not.

The last couple days it hurts so much it feels like bleeding. At times, it suffocates so completely I have to consciously begin to breathe again. My autonomic system is skipping, arrhythmic heartbeat, stomach upsets, sometimes vertigo.

I want to be exiled from the pathos leg of Aristotle’s triangle. I want to travel only to logos destinations that are dotted with hard, defined facts and concrete activities, duties and tasks. I want evidence that I will survive, that the hole in my, my–life/heart/soul/being– will close. See, even my syntactical abilities are on the blink.

How bad is it? Nausea bad. Influenza bad. Give me a drink or five bad.

That bad.

I used to start my day, as many do, by making a list: chores, calls, deadlines, meet ups with friends. List making is a surefire way to banish the chaos that looms at the beginning of any day. Stationary empires have been built on the human obsession with list making.

But now, this past week, I will find myself with a chunk of time that I have not filled with friends, or tasks or calls. Or, the day rounds to the afternoon and I have already blown through the list.

And that open time, that empty field of minutes and hours? It threatens to swallow me; that’s when the breath goes wonky.

And so I have started to create yet another list, a schedule actually. Order, sequence. I write it down. This is what my 3:15- 7:00 post-it looked like today

3:15-3:30 walk dog

3:30-5:00 write (during which time I also finish a Sudoku)

5:00-5:05 change clothes.

5:05-7:00 workout (during which time I also send thinly disguised pleas for company via text)

7:00-7:30 make dinner

7:30- eat dinner while watching TV

9:15 walk dog

I am actually writing down “eat dinner while watching TV” on a post-it. Lunacy.

It is pathetic. I am pathetic. I do not write those words (or these posts) to elicit sympathy or empathy and I’m hoping this one didn’t elicit any antipathy. I am doing the best I can, writing to keep this insane pain of loss on the other side of the door. I am writing because I don’t know what else to do.

I have been strong all my life: strong and smart and accomplished. I have tackled dilemmas, cracked through walls, solved crises, written books, assumed leadership, learned how to knit to sew to quilt to weave. I have learned how to love, to parent, to unclog a sink, to unstick a lock, to untangle a knot. I’ve been a mentor and mentee, a teacher and a student. And always, always, I have gotten shit done. Getting shit done is my middle name. Or was.

Because I now find that I am undone by this. Defeated. By love. Go figure.