The tunnel is long, the light so small it’s hard to even see. It hardly makes sense to keep walking towards it.
I just want to be still… in the dark.
My dad is home after his terrible accident that nearly killed him. His insurance refused to pay for him to stay at the acute rehab any longer at Upstate. (God bless America and its wonderful healthcare system. Please note sarcasm.) He still has a suprapubic catheter. He is in a wheelchair. There are numerous squares on the calendar marked with upcoming surgeries and appointments. When I go to see him, he looks small and old and speaks quietly. His hair, which was still mostly brown at the time of his accident, has turned white. He is clearly depressed, but I come from a family that views mental illness as character defect-so that will most likely never be addressed. No, instead, tight-lip it, till it goes away and you never have to admit it. (I bagged it up, put in my chest and tried to carry it and nearly killed myself doing so. Because of this, I have been punished with much looking-down-upon over the years in my family.) Besides, he has every right to his depression. He went from a very physically fit and active 64 year old to being in a wheelchair, peeing through a hose into a bag. I’d be in an ocean of a blue period, too. Justified situational depression seems to be more palatable for some, I guess…
Also, bad news is a constant point on the horizon…My dad was not injured on his own property, but a lawyer told him it was unlikely that the homeowner’s insurance (of the property he was injured on) will pay his bills—as, at some point, he admitted he knew it could be dangerous to help prop her roof up. Look, waking up feels fucking dangerous sometimes for some of us…we all take risks. Pay the man’s bills. I don’t even want to know how much it cost to mercy-flight him to the trauma unit which was an hour away.
My mother is once again being evasive with information. He has a surgery coming up and she wasn’t going to tell me about it and refused to tell me the date it was happening. I found out from my brother. She seemed irritated that I knew. She has made it clear in other ways that she doesn’t want me involved. I have offered to sit with my dad so she can take a break. She refuses and then asks someone else to assist. I have decided to let it lie. If she doesn’t want me involved, no matter how stupid and hurtful it is, I have to respect it. I learned long ago (albeit not long enough) that to get in a power struggle with her does no good. It all ends up the same, I lose. And if I fight it out with her, not only do I lose, I’m just in a deeper hole of exhaustion…Her punishment is mighty.
Speaking of a deeper hole of exhaustion…remember that common trope in old cartoons where they dig a hole so deep that they come out, upside down, in China? That’s the kind of digging I’m doing. If I don’t end up on the other side of the world, this hole will still make a nice grave.
My Christopher has been in the hospital for nearly 2 weeks with heart failure and kidney failure. I do not have the words within me to express the disemboweling despair that I feel. I am up here, hours away…All I can do is read his texts from afar and send pathetic responses. Our relationship has mostly been one of words between 2 people madly in love—who only get to inhabit the same space on very rare and special occasions. Our words have always been ones of hope, future and our deep love for one another. In this new context, without hope and possibly future, words fail me. What can I possibly say?
Every morning, I spend an agonizing amount of time wondering how to greet him via text…knowing it is NOT a good morning for him…knowing he is sick…Then I send it and the time till I get a response back is the most agonizing part of my day. When I was with Alex, I used to say that the worst part of my day was the 30 seconds between putting my key in the door and opening it, unsure if I would find him dead, overdosed. It is actually why I ended up finally leaving. I couldn’t spend my life being terrified every time I had to open our door. This is similar. Will there be a day where Chris just doesn’t text back? The amount of absolute terror this thought triggers in me is indescribable in depth…It attacks me at some primeval, lizard brain level that does not grant me the rational ability to put into words.
In so many areas of my life, I have been denied closure or resolution. My uncle died before I was ever brave enough to reveal his torture and assaults and get any justice. In my early 30s, I became inexplicably and unhealthily obsessed with finding my uncle’s friend who also abused me…And was dismayed when I finally found his name & information, only to find out he had died 6 months after my uncle. It was then I realized that my intent was to find him and hurt him for what he had done to me. While, thankfully, I was not able to carry out a plan that undoubtedly would have sent me to ruin, I was once again denied closure. I think about my close friend, Bernhard, ex-communicating me on Christmas Eve via email in 2016-without giving a real reason to it. Alex’s death is another situation that was difficult because of its lack of closure. I have no answers about his final days & I don’t even have a grave I can visit. There is so much screaming into the void and having nothing but the echo of my own rage & grief to console me. I have had to grow around the lump in my throat, but, to this day, I still struggle to keep that wound closed. It is always reopening, this seam of ruby beads…I am so terrified something is going to happen to Chris and that I will never know or get to say what I need to say…
You know, you can only have so many wounds before infection sets in.
For me, infection is suicidal ideation. And I already feel the hot pain of it setting into my brain.
Yesterday, they started dialysis in a desperate bid to get his kidneys working again. Because I’m not sure which way things are going, I just feel like it is even more important for me to see him. I told him yesterday I was trying to find a way to rent a car and hotel room down there to come visit. I just had to wait till I could call on my jury summons to find out if I need to report in the next upcoming week. (Yes, of course, in the midst of a tornado, a jury summons swirls its way right into my mailbox…Why not. I once told a friend on here about my childhood abuse and all the tragedies in my life. He was onboard till I once mentioned I had a terrible stutter. He [jokingly] told me he drew the line there. I couldn’t possibly be burdened with all of that terribly traumatic stuff AND a speech impediment. HA. Similarly, the jury summons is where the line needs to be drawn, as well. I can’t be dealing with all this bullshit AND a jury summons.) Anyway, when I told him this, he simply said no, not to try and come down…that his ex-wife and possibly parents were coming to visit and that it would be uncomfortable for me to just sit in the hospital. I was in the middle of a teleconference when I got the text and I had to shut my camera off because I started to cry. It hurt my feelings so incredibly much that it stunned. For one thing, I really just wanted to see him. While, obviously, first and foremost, this has been so very difficult on him—I would never want to pull focus—it has also been difficult for me. I spend my days worrying about him, missing him desperately, trying to keep it together up here while everything around me falls apart. He has always been my safe place, since we became friends and then became more. Of course, all I want to do is go see him, but it hadn’t even occurred to me that he might not want me to visit. It also hurts my feelings that his ex-wife, who, at best, has been emotionally abusive (and continues to be a hanger-on who doesn’t understand the meaning of boundaries) is allowed to visit. I know she doesn’t know of my existence…and this also makes me feel like some kind of dirty secret or something. It makes it feel like she is the legitimate partner and I am the mistress. Thirdly, (are we on thirdly? Who cares?), does he really think I care about my own comfort that much? Especially in these times? I would lie on a bed of fucking rusty nails at this point, if I could be with him, take care of him in some way. It just really hurt my feelings…and continues to. But, as your lover is being taken to dialysis in an effort to kickstart his kidneys and get the fluid out of his chest, what can be said, really? This is not the time to argue. This is not the time to exacerbate the shit situation we’re in. And Words, those things that used to be my friend, they abandoned me and all I could type was, “Oh. Ok.” He wrote back, “I’m sorry.” I lied and wrote, “It’s fine.”
It’s not fine.
I’m not fine.
But what can you say of your own discomfort when your love tells you they took a liter of fluid out of him? Nothing. You do what your family does. You tight-lip it and suffer in silence. I feel terrible even typing any of this in here…but I’ve nowhere else to stay still in the dark.
His ex is coming today. I bowed out gracefully and told him I won’t text because he has visitors. No, I’ll sit here licking my wounds. Quietly. Because I love him. Because it’s not worth it to fight right now. Because it’s not worth it to be upset over this. Not with him. Not right now.
I’ve spent most of my young life and early adult years romancing suicide…Whispering to it, inviting it in, loving the cadences of its speech urging me to just say “fuck it all” and make a grand exit. I loved the final vengefulness of it. Not the feeling of vengefulness against people in my life-but against Life itself. I relished having the final say in who would hurt me the most and having it be me. But then I had kids. And so, I stopped playing with those shadows…knowing better than to engage, teaching myself to just wait out the feeling. Good ol’ Goethe said, “Enjoy when you can, endure when you must.”
But lately…
Lately…
I turn 42 next week. Mostly, I’ve enjoyed aging because I know I am a better person now than I once was. But I am sick of self-improvement through the cruel tutelage of loss. Tired of it. And lately, I can’t help but think of a quote from one of my favorite novels, The End of the Affair by Graham Greene…
*
“When I was at school I learnt about a King – one of the Henrys, the one who had Becket murdered – & he swore when he saw his birthplace burnt by his enemies that because God had done that to him, ‘because You have robbed me of the town I love most, the place where I was born and bred, I will rob You of that which You love most in me.’ Odd how I’ve remembered that prayer after sixteen years. A King swore it on his horse seven hundred years ago, & I pray it now, in a hotel room at Bigwell-on-Sea – Bigwell Regis. I’m going to rob you, God, of what you love most in me. I’ve never known the Lord’s Prayer by heart, but I remember that one – is it a prayer?”*
Lord, hear my prayer. And know me by my spiteful intent.
Song Choice: Shit Talk by Sufjan Stevens
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