Hi Geoff, I am touched to hear from you. I think about you often.
It sounds like you have been doing some deep work and reflecting. I am so glad. And even though the pain is still so present it sounds like you and your girls are surviving together. I want you to know that I have been honored to know you and allowed to peak into your life’s journey. Thank you very much Geoff. And please feel free to reach out to me when you want to. Thank you. From: Geoff D. Miller <gdmiller88@gmail.com>
Date: Friday, January 13, 2023 at 8:10 PM
To: Shayla <shayla@xxxxxx.com Subject: Jenny Its been 10 months now since Jenny passed. I am writing to check in with you. The family is doing ok. Abby is applying for colleges, Leiney has come back to Seattle, having left Western when Jenny was dying, and is now at Seattle College getting her AA. I am about to transition to a Senior management position at a large tech company. It is 100% remote for now, but at some point I may head down to California to live in Palo Alto, where the firm is located. I miss Jenny terribly. I am still deeply wounded by all that happened, and saddened by all I learned in the phase of the loss where I was reading everything she had been saying about me, and how she was seeing Eric most every day. In retrospect, I am struck by several things, I wanted to share with you about what was going on of which you may or may not have been aware. I don't know if I laid these out last year, when I was drowning in grief (I am better, but still seriously grieving). 1) Jenny's irrational fear of abandonment. It seemed like every session or at least very frequently when we met, Jenny kept expressing a fear that I would leave her. My actions didn't matter. The fear, I believe, was real even if it was completely irrational. Even the complaints that I wouldn't sleep in the marital bed I believe now to be reflective of this fear of abandonment. You should know that in the month before her death, I moved back into the marital bed to take care of her. Unfortunately, about two weeks in, she was moved into a hospital bed, set up to abut the other bed. Her last three days she was in and out of consciousness, didn't really know who she was, and I stayed by her side and sang all the songs that we both loved. When she died, I spent 6 more hours with her before letting them take her away. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. 2) Her tendency to engage in splitting, especially evident in her treatment of Abby and me. I was either the devil impeding her ability to have an affair, or an angel sent down from heaven to care for her as she died. 3) She had utterly irrational impulsivity. On Christmas Eve, 2021, high on oxy and fentanyl, she insisted on driving to see a friend--which I later learned was a lie and she was going to see Eric. Go figure. This impulsivity and risky behavior was with her well before she was diagnosed with cancer, but I had somehow been blind to it. 4) Zero to 60 in 2 seconds. The kids and I experienced these wild mood swings, where something none of us could understand (for all the years I was with her) would set her off. We would shrug it off, and never successfully addressed it and therefore never resolved the issue. It made us walk on egg shells. It seemed normal, because it had gone on for so long. 5) Simmering Anger. I am sure I talked to you about the time in my life before I moved to California in 2011, that I would come home and go straight upstairs to play with Leiney to avoid Jenny's wrath. The tactic never worked. Jenny was at home, never in public that I can recall--at least so others could tell--often carrying around this anger and you never knew when it would seep out or come out like a geyser. 6) Complete change in interests--This may be related to the affair, but more than 20 years into the relationship Jenny suddenly became interested in watching sports, basketball and football, which was unlike her. She had always rooted for the Seahawks, but this was next level. Again, her lover is a PE teacher, so who knows, but it was weird to see. Again, the kids even commented on the change. 7) The Suicide Attempt--Given that I believe she had undiagnosed BPD, I now think that the early morning texts telling me she was going to kill herself was driven by her irrational fear of abandonment. I had called the wife of the man she was cheating with the day before and told her everything. Jenny believed she would no longer be able to see Eric. I had moved out, and while I was coming home every morning to care for her, she still feared I was leaving--no matter what I said. My moving back in was for the girls (I wouldn't leave them there to find their mother dead should she have gone on to kill herself), for Jenny and for me. I loved her. I couldn't stand the idea of her harming herself. To be clear, the day after the event (which I think was a strategy, conscious or not, to get me to come back) she learned that the affair would continue and her suicidal ideation ceased, never to be spoken of again. It was so complete a change that she denied she ever tried to do it, despite writing suicide notes to the girls, despite Leiney, her sister and I witnessing it,despite my sister-in-law a former hostage negotiator spending 40 minutes on the phone with her talking her downand convincing her to take a xanax. 8) Jenny had what can only be described as chronic feelings of emptiness, well before falling ill. I would try and sooth her, but in retrospect I blew her off. I would tell her you are amazing, think of all the things you have accomplished, how many lives you have changed and would suggest she get a therapist or check her anti-depressent dosage to see if it could be increased. Crass ideas, to be sure that I regret making. I should have tried harder to understand her. 9) Jenny ran a campaign of lies about me, telling people I was treating her cruelly, alienating friends I have had for decades, some for longer than I knew Jenny. She would admit in therapy routinely that I am nothing but kind to her, but tell her friends massive untruths, and never explaining, when relevant, that disagreements arose because of her affair. 10) The thing I struggle with the most, the thing that hurts the most, besides losing her to cancer, is how she simply abandoned the kids for the 19 months of the illness. Nothing they said could get her to want to spend time with them, even when they were very direct with her. It was brutal. She had lost the ability to relate to them after they became teenagers. They no longer worshipped her, and she no longer made them a priority. Once she fell ill, they were a nuisance, an afterthought. Apart from the time Abby shamed Jenny into staying home with Leiney instead of going out with friends, a 5 day summer trip to Oregon to check off things on her bucket list, and the one day we spent at the Tacoma Glass Museum, Jenny never made time for her kids those 19 months. =================================================================== Starting in January 2021, I journaled almost daily, which you may recall she complained about in therapy. It kept me sane, kept her more honest. As we approach her birthday in a few days, I have gone back and read many entries. I wish I could focus on the times that were good, and I do from time to time smile thinking about this thing or that thing we did, but mostly, I feel terrible about the kids and the inability to get Jenny to spend time with them. I sometimes wonder, given that she was with her lover most every day, and lied and lied about it in therapy, ruefully complaining that I was an obstacle to seeing him, why she attended therapy at all--to what end? What was real? What was fake? When did she stop loving me--because she told people she didn't love me (even said she loathed me)--so what was the point of therapy? I wasn't leaving. . . Which, leads me to believe she thought everything she was doing was ok, whether it was ignoring the kids or asking me to ignore the affair until she was better, she perhaps thought that the therapist would have her back. I am still baffled by it, by the craziness of it. I have resolved at this point never to have another relationship. I didn't know Jenny was lying to me wholesale at a fundamental level. I blame myself for that willful blindness. I mean, how did I not know she was, as she told people in her emails, seeing her lover everyday? Jenny was the love of my life. There is a hole in my life that opened up after I found out she was cheating, that only got larger when she refused to stop, and then became a canyon when she died. Setting aside her ignoring the kids, hating me, lying prolifically, carrying on the affair until she died, and trashing me to her friends, I loved her. I have so many loving memories, so many good feelings, but all of that is engulfed in this morass of pain and disappointment. I don't know what I expect from you in response, why I have felt the need to email you about this for so long. I hope all is well. |
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