And All I Wanted Was a Shimmer of Your Shine To Make Me Bright

Sorrow -- Van Gogh 1882

I want to fix her. I want to find a cure, a way to stop the suffering.  The agony is real. Ceaseless. The fear corporeal. Tonight, I started receiving harrowingly sad texts as I sat in Abby's car at YTN.  My heart broke into a million pieces again and again with each message. 

I found her at home in the bathtub for the third time today, abdominal cramps from the cancer leaving her ashen and bereft. It took 3 visits the the bathroom to coax her from the now tepid water, which she had been in for over an hour.  I pulled the plug, and got her up, wrapped her towel around her. Dried her off.  The sorrow in her eyes leaving knife wounds wherever they came to rest on me. Mostly, she stared vacantly into space, not resolute, not resigned, not stoic.  Lost.  Even asking to no one in particular, "Is this what it was all for?"  "Can this really be it?" "Why?"  I left her alone in our cramped bathroom.

Fifteen minutes later, after realizing she hadn't left, I went to check on her.  She was kneeling on the floor, head bowed, facing the sink like it was an alter.  I tried to get her up, she was not moving.  I left her again for a few more minutes.  I went and turned the bed down and put a heating pad on it for her. When I returned she had changed positions. Now facing the door, she was not procumbent or really even kneeling, but on her knees, her body leaned forward, arms almost outstretched, her face in her forearms, and her stubbled head pointing toward the door. I have no words. I am helpless. I am useless in this suffering.  

I don't know what I am going to do when she leaves, except grieve.

Like A Bird On A Wire

I teeter between the grief of Jenny's terminal illness and grief over the affair and her refusal to stop. It is a precarious position. I see her suffering and all I want is to find a cure. I can't imagine a world with her absence, it would be much poorer for it. She does so much good in the world.  I have met students whose lives she has changed through teaching, advocacy, and an almost filial love. She is beloved by students, parents, coworkers and her vast network of friends.  Almost every day, and often more than 2x a day, Amazon comes with gifts.  People practically fought over providing meals for us via mealtrain. We received dozens of gift cards for Uber Eats, Door Dash, etc. For her 50th birthday, her best friend Amy arranged for 50 days of Jenny--each day a special gift was sent by someone for 50 days.  She is beloved, and deservedly so.

Entre nous, this juncture is where the cognitive dissonance enters for me. How can someone who is so beloved for her kindness do this to her own beloved?  And by do this, I do mean the litany of things she has done that have been set forth here prior to this, but more specifically, I mean how can she blame me and how in the name of all that is logical can she refuse to stop and expect me to be okay with what she would describe as recently found polyamory and what I call a banal affair with a pinche motherfucker? How can she act cruelly without compunction? How can someone who claims to love you, inflict pain and then ignore the impact? And then do it again, again, and then again? I shout into the void asking these things and never even hear an echo.