Home: A mask-free place

What I took for rudeness was just him trying to slog through another day.

He came up the stairs and walked past me without acknowledging my presence. It wasn’t the first time, and this time it hit me wrong. I was mad. I was really, really mad! Common courtesy means someone greets you when they walk past you, right? I felt dismissed, like I didn’t matter. So I followed him to his room and yelled. Everything I was thinking came out. He was rude. He was disrespectful. He ignored me. Why couldn’t he just say hello when he came in? Why was that so hard?

He looked shell shocked. He managed to get a brief explanation out, and to say he’d try to do better in the future. Little did I realize that by the time he made it home from work, he was wiped out.

As I sat in the living room for a bit and thought about what had just happened, it hit me.

All day long he’d pretended to be OK. He put on his mask, went out into the world, and did what was expected of him. But by the end of the day, his mask was slipping, and he could no longer put it back in place. There was nothing left to give, not a single word to share. His only goal was to make it to his bed and collapse.

And I was asking him to pretend to be OK, to pretend to be civil when he didn’t have the energy to do it. I was asking him to wear a mask in the one place where he shouldn’t have to – his own home.

I went back down the hallway, not stomping and not mad this time. Instead, I apologized. I didn’t realize how hard things were for him. I didn’t understand the cost of just getting through a day. But I did realize that I was being unfair.

Home has to be his safe space. The one place where he doesn’t have to pretend to be OK, where he doesn’t have to put on a happy face or talk when he is spent. Home is where he can just breathe – especially when that’s a struggle. His place of rest. Where the mask, the expectations, the “societal norms” if you will, are set aside. Where he can do whatever he can do at a pace he can manage – without judgement, without fear of offending me, without having to play a part.

Home has to be a place of rest, and it has to be mask-free. So how do we make that happen in our house?

Listen. I have to listen closely to what he’s saying and how he’s saying it. If he’s tired, wiped out, not interested in something, it’s usually evident in his words or his body language.

Monitor. I try to keep an eye on the balance of activities vs. down time. It’s not my job, and it’s not my decision, but I can encourage him to rest or plan to rest when things have been busy. Tonight I commented that he’s been very social lately and I expect him to be hiding under a blanket in a couple days. He agreed and said he’s exhausted, yet he has a full day tomorrow. I foresee some nights in later this week with some comfort food served for dinner.

Keep expectations realistic. There will be times when he just can’t do something - carry on a conversation, participate in a social activity, fix his dinner, even do his laundry. I try not to push; he’s the best judge of what he can manage at a given time.

Prioritize. What must be done? And what can I do to help get it done? We work together to make those things happen. The important things will get done. The other things can wait until a better time - or never.

I think the key is to be observant, trust his judgement, and support him where I’m able.