I'm cranky over the mundane pettiness of this existence. The grating anger toward me, the seething resentment, which moved like slow magma beneath Jenny's otherwise calm exterior when she was healthy, and that used to infuse our everyday interactions, shows up again when she is functioning without the effects of chemo.
My refusal to leave reminds me a lot of that stubborn sonofabitch Harry Truman--no not that Harry Truman. I mean Harry R. Truman, the one who refused to move off Mt. St. Helen's after it woke up in the late 1970s. It didn't end well for the old codger, he ended up under a hundred and fifty-feet of hot mud instantly, when the mountain erupted. Sometimes, I think I know the feeling of all that weight bearing down on you, suddenly and without warning. Harry was quoted in the Oregonian just before the eruption insisting, "No, that mountain will never hurt me." None is so blind as he who lives on an active volcano, one which on its surface appears to be pristine and calm alpine terrain. I saw my therapist in person today. We are both vaccinated, but both wore masks, nevertheless. It was the first time I have seen her in person since 2007(?), I would guesstimate, although that may be completely wrong, and might be even earlier. We discussed my ongoing struggle with an affair that doesn't end, and a life that will end sooner than later. I think I have come to deeply resent people who tell me what they would do in such a situation as this, as if its easy or they have been through it before. It isn't.
They haven't. I'm still working with the doc to put and keep all this shit in a box for now. Her advice today, which she keeps trying to get me to understand, is to view the world as absurdist, rather than ordered, logical. Essentially, put down the Thornton Wilder script, and do a live reading of any Harold Pinter play. I get it. I was all aboard the existentialist angst train by 15. I understand that life only has the meaning we ascribe to it, and in a universe devoid of meaning, or any fixed ontological construct, we have to laugh when we are confronted with something as unreal as this. If only I could. I am to work on seeing this entire enterprise through absurdist eyes. I may try so hard I end up in worse shape than Guernica, but I am determined.
Is everything a competition for Jenny and me? For me? The therapist thinks so. Maybe this whole time we've been playing relationship chicken, neither one of us able or willing to swerve for fear of being the loser. Fuck. Am I that petty? Right now it feels that way, with every argument a zero sum game, every disagreement someone's fault. I can count on my hand the number of times over the years Jenny has apologized to me after a fight when she realizes she was wrong and is willing to admit it. Am I the same way?
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| Parking Lot Paradise |
Being in this marriage has for the last few years seemed like being marooned in one of those low rent, Sears parking lot, early summer carnivals. You know the rides suck, the games are rigged, the first food item on the concession stand menu is e. coli, but here you are. You hate the rides, yet you go on them joylessly. You half-heartedly throw a dirty yellow softball at stacked empty simulcra of milk bottles, hoping to win a prize you neither want nor need, an ashtray with the Jack Daniels logo emblazoned across its bottom. You even scarf down the nauseating food.
And you do it again, going back every year to that parking lot, excited as you see it from afar, unable to help from running to the ticket booth, even though you know exactly what disappointment to expect. And the disappointment never disappoints-- talk about the tyranny of low expectations.
Tonight, after Kim's arrival, something happened that hasn't happened since we moved in nearly five years ago. Jenny came down the stairs to the basement to tell me goodnight. This, I know, because its been a thing, such a thing in fact that I discussed it in therapy. Whenever Jenny wants to talk to me and I'm downstairs, I am summoned. I have pointed out
repeatedly that the stairs actually work both ways, one can both go up and down them, regardless of gender. It isn't that she doesnt go down the stairs, just never to interact with me. But tonight, with an audience, she played the loving wife. It was Academy Award-worthy.
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