I used to love to talk to my sisters on the phone. We’d talk for hours. There was never enough time to talk to my sisters as much as I wanted to.<\/p>\n
I’ve got old\u00a0friends who I used to talk with\u00a0that way, too. Hours.<\/p>\n
Today, I talked to one of them. I squeezed it in while I was waiting for Tom to have physical therapy, so we could only talk for about 45 minutes.<\/p>\n
I was relieved when it was over. The conversation, I mean.<\/p>\n
There’s something about talking to people you love when you feel like you’ve got nothing but troubles to talk about. It’s almost more painful than the pain itself.<\/p>\n
A distance.<\/p>\n
It’s not that they wouldn’t listen or wouldn’t understand. My sisters have known me all my life, my best friends have known me for a lot\u00a0of my life, and each of them has experienced some part of what I’m going through now – their own health issues, a husband who needs their care, being forced to move, a career dilemma, general turmoil.<\/p>\n
They love me. They haven’t done anything wrong. They’ve sent me lots of supportive notes during these difficult days.<\/p>\n
This distance seems to be in me.<\/p>\n
I didn’t put it there on purpose, but I see\u00a0it as clearly and as wide as the Chattahoochee River.<\/p>\n
Distance is a familiar tactic of the\u00a0general, and of the depressive.<\/p>\n
Distance is a respite. It gives you time to gather your defenses.<\/p>\n
Distance\u00a0prevents the enemy from seeing your weakness.\u00a0It is the invisible wall that guards against further attack.<\/p>\n
Distance is a way to rest from your weariness with your own self. Because having to talk about it makes you be inside those troubles again and again.<\/p>\n
Today’s penny is a 2014. I can’t remember that year at all right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I used to love to talk to my sisters on the phone. We’d talk for hours. There was never enough time to talk to my sisters as much as I wanted to. I’ve got old\u00a0friends who I used to talk with\u00a0that way, too. Hours. Today, I talked to one of them. I squeezed it in … read more The distance I feel<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[318],"tags":[36,529,442,1191,86,92],"class_list":["post-9006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-refraction","tag-36","tag-defense","tag-depression","tag-distance","tag-family","tag-friends"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9006"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9033,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9006\/revisions\/9033"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}