Half A League, Half A League, Half A League Onward

 Entry 1     12:54 a.m.

West Side Story was pretty good. Jenny made it far more entertaining and albeit, worrisome, when she started hallucinating during the movie.  That was new. Her rapid weight loss, combined with the increased strength of the meds she is taking is making for very interesting times. She thought she was in the movie she told us, and you could tell sitting next to her. When Riff was killed, I thought she was dying. When Tony and Riff are in the basement of Doc's pharmacy, and Tony was gathering cans, Jenny thought she and Leiney were gathering cans.  Wild. I let her sisters know this happened, and told them if she tries to drive, I will stop her, something I was unwilling to do before now. She will kill someone. It is plain as day.

Tomorrow Becky, Jenny's Trumper friend who she went to high school with and who lives in Vancouver, is coming up to see Jenny.  She is bringing her husband, who is a chef, who will cook for us. Some small solace, I suppose.

Jenny threw up her dinner, the first solid food she had since I made her breakfast of an egg and smoothie this morning. She refused broth, jello, pudding, ice cream, smoothie. She was/is angry she can't eat sushi.  I nixed that. It would have been horrendous. She isn't supposed to have it, and if she did, what a mess I'd have been cleaning up. I understand her frustration with the soft food restriction, but it is unavoidable.

The whole family loved West Side Story. As Jenny hallucinated, I sat next to her with tears streaming down my face. This is a terrible way to go. ALS is a terrible disease and I always thought a terrible way to go, the worst. But now it feels like all terminal diseases are a terrible way to go, and I can't say ALS is the worst. You lose your sense of self, your purpose in life, your hopes and dreams. You watch as you are decommissioned, bit by bit.

What you are at the core, does it come to the fore as you are dying? Or is it distorted, like your reflection in a funhouse mirror? Jenny is losing piece after piece of her freedom, of her life, of her identity. It's terrible. 

Saying all that, the shit she has pulled and continues to engage in these last 17 months is unforgivable. I won't forgive her, may the spirit of my Irish great-grandmother, who didn't speak to her sister for decades over a slight, fill me with the power to hold that grudge, to feed it, nurture it.  I want to make a list of her friends, who I thought so highly of for so long, and remember them for their trespasses. I have to care for her and remain loving, but let me seethe with hatred for the abettors, the liars, the two-faced people who literally are smiling at me while fucking me at the drive-thru.  Let me continue to be kind, caring and loving to this woman, who if she wasn't sick I'd be calling a rat bastard for all the running around and lying and deception and betrayal. Her lies this morning about her therapist telling her to lie to me shows what a poor gaslighter she is. Let me help make her last days comfortable, without engaging in such great self-abnegation that I lose my ability to remember the wrongs she has committed in the name of love for el pinché. 

I am trying to do a reckoning, a measurement of  sorts. I hate this life so much, not in an I am going to end it all kind of way, but in a, "Hey, stop the bus, I missed my stop!" kind of way. I live in the now, or am trying my best to do so, but I am also desperately trying to understand where it went wrong. Has it always been this way? Have I always been a cuckold, a fool for her amusement and exploitation.  When I spend 17 hours in a day caring for her and this house, to discover she is still running around and gaslighting me, it causes one to ruminate.  I do feel a lot like Bessie the Cow, chewing on the disgusting cud of the promises we made and broke. Not surprisingly, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. 

 

Basically, I am Aria Stark.