“A glutton for punishment” means someone who seems to enjoy doing something that you consider unpleasant, according to Cambridge Dictionary.
“A glutton for punishment” is also a title of Richard Yates’ short story in his “Eleven Kinds of Loneliness” short stories collection. In this story, he described the day when Walter Henderson has been fired.
It was in New York in the early 1960s. Since he could not stop himself from being fired, at least keep it dignified, he told himself. The calmness that he produced against his real feeling was rather successful. His boss, his secretary, his colleagues, and his friend were deceived by his pretended calmness.
And this success encouraged him to keep his trouble to himself without telling his wife. His plan was going out and coming back home on usually time, he acted as he still have the job. And during the “working time” he would look for new job, and he would tell his wife when he get the new job.
He went to library to kill time before the normal time of his homecoming. And the library reminded him about his first date with his wife, at the top of the library. Almost all his life being a loser, but the first date with his wife was the one clear triumph to look back on- one time in his life … won.
After library was the cocktail lounge, and the memorable walk by the river with his wife. Five years later, on the day he lost his job, he walked again the same way, only this time alone.
When he was home, little details revealed something was wrong with him. His wife showed her concern but she never pushed him to tell her everything when he tried to hide the fact that he has been fired. But not until …
When she came out again, closing the children’s door behind her, she found him standing like a tragic statue at the window, looking down into the darkening courtyard.
He felt uneasy that his wife look through him. He even found she was not pretty at the moment she asked him to tell her the truth.
He began to walk slowly away toward an easy chair across the room, and the shape of his back was an eloquent statement of impending defeat. At the edge of the carpet he stopped and seemed to stiffen, a wounded man holding himself together; then he turned around and faced her with the suggestion of a melancholy smile.“Well, darling-” he began. His right hand came up and touched the middle button of his shirt, as if to unfasten it, and then with a great deflating sigh he collapsed backward into the chair, one foot sliding out on the carpet and the other curled beneath him. It was the most graceful thing he had done all day. “They got me,” he said.
When life is tough, do not punish yourself by facing it alone. It is painful enough, facing it alone only make it unbearable. Walter could not even survived one day with his determination to keep it dignified. I often heard this sentence: happiness is doubled when shared. I would also add “burdens is halved when shared”. Just like the same way that Walter walked with his wife, but on the day he has been fired, the way seemed a much longer walk alone.
He walked there now, down through the clangor of Third Avenue and up toward Tudor City-it seemed a much longer walk alone-until he was standing at the little balustrade, looking down over the swarm of sleek cars on the East River Drive and at the slow, gray water moving beyond it. It was on this very spot, while a tugboat moaned somewhere under the darkening skyline of Queens, that he had drawn her close and kissed her for the first time.
Richard Yates, A Glutton for Punishment (Eleven Kinds of Loneliness).