We're All Just Searching For Something Bigger Than We're All Able to Find

All These Scrapes On Our Knees Tell Us Where We Have Been, Where We Have Bled

I have landed solidly in the camp of high disdain with Abby. I'm not sure whether it could ever have been avoided, but I can say that my ride with her to Red Robin last week, and my anxiety riven self didn't win me any favors when I warned her she was about to hit a parked car when backing up, and directing her to move closer to the middle of the lane when she was hugging a bit to close to the right side of a street with parked cars on it.  As an aside, I drove her car to Les Schwab and dropped it off for an brake job and alignment. They are doing the job tomorrow.

The disconnect came pretty swiftly before that.  I noticed she stopped coming to hang out with me at all. It had been a nightly routine. But, it ceased.  She even has largely stopped coming to see the dog, as she was doing pretty frequently, but does come say goodnight to him every night.  At least that. Otherwise, she hides in her room until Jenny goes to sleep, and then comes out and bakes or makes a meal.

The anger is palpable.  If I wake her up, which I do every day for school, I get her full annoyance. If I offer to bring her water, ask to remove dishes from her room, or go for a walk, I get disdain and decline. We had been walking routinely., not anymore 

This weekend I got the couch out of the office, the desk was removed last week.  That space is hers now, to do what she will. I offered to help set it up, she declined. I don't know what to do. It is breaking my heart.

My boss called me this morning to tell me April 7 is her last day. She will be around after that for about 12 weeks, I'm guessing FMLA, but then she is gone. I did not volunteer to be the interim.  More on this as it develops, but it is not good.

Jenny and I are functioning.  I'm severely unhappy, she knows, but I don't show it.  I am stuck, very stuck.  Still hasn't mentioned seeing Eric the pinché motherfucker since the attempt to attempt suicide.  But, she is doing gangbusters in her mood and it can't only be that her reaction to chemo has lessened since the dose was lowered.  I really can't stand any of this. If I didn't have kids, I'd be all, "By the Time I Get to Phoenix." That would actually make her happy, if she were well. But, she needs me now.  I don't know anymore.  I am twisted up like a pretzel.

Leiney has been making masks for the last year.  Jenny got her a tiny iron as a gift for her birthday.  Leiney left it on, it fell on the floor, and burned through the cord that connects the sewing machine petal to the sewing machine.  It could have been worse.  But, like me and her grandmother before her, her ADHD makes a tiny iron a dangerous proposition.

Moved my stuff out of the Airbnb apartment yesterday.  The smell of the place was redolent in all of the things I had left there.  Awful.  

Jenny asked me if I wanted to spend time with her tomorrow night. She said she would not be offended if I said no, but that isn't true.  She may have been happy to go to Jennifer's, her regular Wednesday date, but she would have made a stink about me not wanting to spend time with her, despite the fact that I am always with her when she is home. I wouldn't mind not spending time with her, but I don't need the drama. When we are alone, I just keep thinking, how can you be doing this to me?  Why are you doing this to me?  How is this okay?  The reality is, I have nothing to do. No one I want to see. Nowhere I want to be. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Life, A Cascading Series of Disappointment

Image
Jenny has cancer.  Terminal cancer.  We learned that in late July. Jenny had  dropped 25 lbs. in the spring without trying.  She had been having vague stomach complaints since October.  As a balm for her concerns, her doctor agreed to do a CT scan for her, but told her they would find nothing.  Jenny wanted to rule out pancreatic cancer, which had recently killed her dad-in the spring of 2019.  Her mother had been sick with lymphoma since February 2020.  The day of the scan, the doctor told Jenny they would get results back in a few days. When Jenny's phone rang that same afternoon, I was in the living room with Abby, where I was torturing her by playing the Rapping Duke on Youtube. Jenny shouted from the room, "Geoff, get in here, the doctor's on the phone." "You have a four cm. mass on your pancreas,"  he said. Jenny made a sound like someone had punched her in the stomach.  "There is a spot on your liver. You have a necrotic lymph nod...
Read more

Still Muddling Through Somehow

Image
At the park, I walked my dog through the rain this morning— not really proper rain— more like air that has decided to shrug water at you out of habit. It suited my mood well enough. As I walked, my thoughts kept returning to the same small universe they often do. They are not new thoughts. They orbit the same losses. They consider the same betrayals, the same questions that never resolve. They have been captured, these thoughts, never to escape, never to be forgotten, never to burn up in the atmosphere. It is simply the gravitational field of my life now. What might seem or feel like self-pity is more like muscle memory, which tells me I need more exercise. The holidays are here, and Christmas has always been central to my life, atheist that I am. It was stitched into Jenny’s life — the love of Christmas — at least as strongly as it was stitched into mine. We carried that love forward with the kids, year after year, without ever needing to talk about why it mattered; it just did. I...
Read more

Don't Do It, Don't Do It, Oh, Lord

Image
It Hurts, It Hurts So Bad.  .  . 3:44 a.m. I walked in the door last night at just before 10 to find Jenny in a ball on the floor--between the giant ottoman and sectional--agonizing pain in her hip. I had ridden to acting with the student driver.  But, let's back up. Jenny had chemo yesterday.  Her friend Jennifer took her.  It was uneventful and she received chemo.  I, as always, prepared the house for her arrival to make sure she wanted for nothing and would be comfortable as she endures the aftermath of all that poison.  Sometime before she came home, she texted, saying the doctor suggested she try Aleve for her hip pain.  Aleve.   She asked me to pick some up for her while Abby was at acting.   During the text exchange I realized she would be alone after Abby and I left for acting.  Leiney was elsewhere and had therapy at 5 and kickboxing later, and her sister Moni had bailed on chemo because she had so much to do (Wit...
Read more