Aaron lost his left index finger and part of his thumb in a workplace accident, shattering his sense of competence. His wife's emotional changes after surgery have strained their marriage, and he fears losing her on top of years of other losses that have left him deeply lonely.
How you doing, Aaron?
Hey, how are you?
Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Thank you for being here. Can I have a hug? Yeah, welcome. Thank you. All right, Aaron, so I wanna know from you, what is the biggest challenge in your relationship?
Trying to achieve the same goals. We both have the same goals or ideas. We share common interests, but it seems like We each try to get there a separate way.
Mm-hmm.
That seems to kind of make us clash a little bit.
Do you feel like your relationship changed after her surgery?
Maybe because she wasn't feeling as comfortable with herself. And you know, it's kind of hard for somebody to love another person when they're not even comfortable in their own skin.
You also experienced tragedy with your hand. Tell me about that.
Well, I went in to work to finish up a project and made a very bad mistake, some poor judgment, which then caused me to lose my left index finger and half of my thumb.
How has that moment changed you as a person?
I don't feel as competent. I don't feel like I can get the things done that I need to get done. I need to get done, whether it be simple chores around the house, you know, a small honey-do list, or any project that I wanna work on, or I get more frustrated to where I just walk away from it. I have 7 or 8 projects at home that I've started, and they're just piled up, not finished, 'cause I can't come back to them.
Got it. Do you feel alone at times?
I do, because I feel that as much as I've gone through, Just in the past 3, 4 years alone, I've lost 3, 4, 5 different important people in my life leading up to my accident. So it seemed like every time that I try to pick myself up from the first incident, I was getting knocked down with something else.
Got it.
And she never could, I guess, necessarily relate because she hasn't had an important person in her life that was really close to her be taken from her.
Are you afraid of losing your wife?
I'm afraid that we can't get back to who we were in the beginning. I agree.
