I'm Going Off The Rails On A Crazy Train

 

And then the other shoe drops.  .  .

Jenny went to Jennifer Murray's after therapy ended at 1:30.  Murray had another friend over, someone else with stage iv cancer.  When she arrived home, she was, not surprisingly given how the day has been going, morose.  She rushed to her bedroom and threw herself on her bed, sobbing.  Not unusual.  Happens weekly.  I have no answer to this.  I do my best to first give her distance, and then give her comfort.  I followed that pattern.    

Prone on the bed, she tells me she wishes she were dead now.  What is the point, she asks. "I am just going to die anyway."  She then begins a list of lamentations, of which I am not unfamiliar.  She is completely overwrought as she lists them: She is going to die; there is no point; she gets no affection.  She sleeps in the bed alone.  Exeunt Geoff, who retreats back to the couch.

Glum

I begin entering the above, and hear movement.  It's Jenny, who is storming the kitchen with the fortitude of an 18-year old Iowa farm boy on Omaha beach after a hearty breakfast and a great thirst for revenge.  For some reason I have been unable to decipher, discern, or frankly believe, she had her face covered.  Clearly, I still recognized her.  She grabbed her pill box and then moved like sixty back to her room.  The sobbing, which had lessened on her travel to and from the kitchen, amplified.  I rushed to the bedroom.  She was again, on her side of the bed, meds next to her head.  She is holding her phone, almost hyperventilating from her crying.  I ask, "Why did you bring your pills in here?"  She keeps sobbing.  I ask, "Are you suicidal?"  She is not non-responsive, but her body language is noncommittal and noncommunicative.  I nonchalantly ask, "Do you have a plan?"  Picking up her phone, and maintaining no eye contact, she answers between sobs in a manner that almost sounded as if it was intended to impart foreboding, "Not yet."  What are you doing on your phone?" I ask.  "Looking up the amount of what is that medicine they give me after chemo, olanzapine?  I am looking up the amount of olanzapine I need to take to kill me."

I reach for and take her med box.  I am maintaining a keel more even than Noah's boat in drydock.  This whole time, my attitude is to not mirror her emotional state, but to come across with about as much emotion as Lurch  masturbating.  I could have said Lurch parking, Lurch skydiving, Lurch doing needlepoint, but given the heaviness of the subject matter, a smile can't hurt.  Jenny begs me not to take the pillbox.  She begins to enumerate the reasons she needs to die now.  Glum ,from the Banana Splits, at his lowest looks like Dale Carnegie compared to Jenny in this emotional state.  She tells me she has given up hope, has the right to die, is tired of the interminable and indescribable suffering.  No one will miss her she says, and if they do, the easier it will be for them to begin healing if she dies now and gets it over with.  I listen, patiently.  I then dismantle each claim.  She asserts, demands is perhaps a better word, that she be listened to and respected with regard to wanting to kill herself.  No one understands,  she states, what she is going through, no one gets the pain she suffers.  

I offer the same explanation that I have proffered in the past.  I will support her decision whatever it is, with regard to the cessation of treatment.  If she wants to quit chemo, it is her decision.  However, if that is the decision she wants to make, she can't do it in a fit of pique, or because she has learned her cancer coach has the BRCA gene.  "If you want to stop treatment, you should talk to the palliative care team's Dr. Beiter.  Killing yourself now, would be terribly devastating to your children and me."  I didn't recite, as I have in the past, the legacy of further suicides which often occurs when a parent makes a final exit.  

She continued crying. I told her I would text her sisters.  She begged me not to text them.  I did anyway.  She ranted about, not untruly, many of the things I have said here about their failure to step up and what she views as their almost radioactive narcissism.  I laid near her waiting for a response from either sister.  

30 minutes later Chris calls.  Jenny becomes instantly furious that I texted, and refuses to speak to Chris.  Chris offers to walk Greenlake with Jenny.  I relay the offer. Jenny declines.  Chris offers to go with Jenny to get a bite to eat--Jenny isn't hungry.  I say to Chris, "Just come over."  Okay, she says.  FFS, how hard was that?  

Before she could get here, Jenny left, still furious that I'd reached out.  I tried to stop her, to no avail, but did make sure she had no meds with her.  I called Chris and told her there was no need to come over.  She didn't come then or at all tonight. It's a 15 minute drive.  Sigh. 

This story has gotten tedious, but I will persevere. Jenny already begins to repaint today's history with a broad brush:

This complete fiction may appear familiar, a game she has played before, twisting or drowning the facts.  But unlike the February incident, this is happening only a few moments after the suicide threats.  She continues:

This fiction is an intentional lie. She had just made affirmative steps and made clear statements that she intended to kill herself right then and there.  This revisionist nonsense no longer boggles, but smells like a lot of gas leaking from a very worn lamp. It continues:

So, she didn't really mean it?

This is almost more than I can deal with.   Intentionally conflating a suicidal meltdown and threats and actions taken with the intent to harm oneself, and then pretending, not 10 minutes after the episode ends, that none of it ever happened.  To do this not just to downplay it, but through statements and omissions try to make the person sound unreasonable who was attempting to keep you safe.  .    .   I responded to this, as did her sister Chris:

I should now reveal that Abby was sitting in the room adjacent to our bedroom when the meltdown took place.  She heard everything, every word, every disparaging word about those who love her, every pleading to be allowed to kill herself, every statement that life isn't worth living.  I hugged my youngest for a long time, and held her as she cried.   

As soon as Jenny fled the home I went to find Abby, to make sure she was okay and to comfort her. She was in her office crying.  I hugged her and hugged her again. I turned on Pitch Perfect for her, her comfort food.  I had texted Jenny and told her Abby had heard everything she had said.

Jenny came home soon thereafter, apologized to Abby, told her that she would never hurt herself, never do anything like that because it would cause Abby so much pain, and she would never do anything to cause her pain.  Also, Abby's room and study room are and have been adjacent to our room for 5 years, the entirety of the time we have been here. Abby, Jenny knew, was home.  So she knew or should have known, given Abby has repeatedly told us she can hear everything that takes place in the bedroom (and the door was open the entire time), that Abby was hearing this.  

Jenny then apologized to me, and mumbled something about "not going to feel guilty about" her behavior.  I hadn't asked, and am still perplexed by what little I understood or what I was to make of that statement.  Jenny doesn't feel guilty about much. Doesn't feel guilty about this behavior, about Eric el pinché motherfucker, about lying about Eric el pinché motherfucker, about using our money for hotel rooms, trips etc.  I already knew this, and didn't ask for clarification. So, maybe I'm not perplexed but understood perfectly what she was trying to tell me with her garbled words.

The rest of the night proceeded as if nothing had happened.  Nothing at all. She watched the movie with Abby and was in perfectly  fine spirits. She participated with me in a meeting for almost two hours where she was bubbly, polite and positively normal. When Leiney got home from work (told today she is the leader in the country knocking on doors at Amnesty Int'l) Jenny sat with her, totally normal, and watched Schitt's Creek.  I repaired to my room, after walking and talking to a dear friend to decompress.  When Leiney went to bed, I came out, and Jenny instantly entered morose mode again.  I ignored it.  What else am I to do?

When Moni finally checked in after her yoga class, she did let drop that Jenny has told her nothing has changed with Eric el pinché, a far cry from what she claims in therapy.  How utterly unsurprisingly duplicitous and yet, even still, incredibly disappointing.