It's Never Too Late To Try And Make It Right

Entry 1

And Fix Mistakes Before You Say Goodbye.

I had a four hour lunch with a friend of Jenny's the other day--a family friend. She and I met the first day Leiney was at coop preschool, 19.5 years ago. She is a therapist, and the only one of Jenny's flying monkeys that eventually saw through the machinations and dissenting. Almost the entire conversation was Jenny related. 


Do me a favor, keep in mind, should the topic of Jenny come up, don't tell me you know she loved me. Not helpful. It raises my hackles. Paul loves me. Cheryl loves me. Sara loves me. Eachean loves me. Chris and Moni love me. Ashley loves me. Hell, even my sister Catherine loves me (one helluva concession on my part). Of those things I am certain, based on their actions. But none of us can know--and it isn't helpful to me to tell me something that isn't knowable and flies in the face of her actions--that Jenny loved me. It is soul crushing for me, but living in that reality is more preferable to me than pretending I can know. If anything, I lean far toward the other direction. Telling me otherwise is the equivalent of coming into my room and telling my three year-old-self that there is no boogeyman under the bed after I told you where I just saw him in the shadows. I was there, you were not. 

For me, right now at least, every day feels like Jenny died yesterday. Each day feels like I just discovered the affair. Every. Bloody. Day. It is raw and feels fresh. We are 1.5 years out from her departure, and most days, as on this gloomy Monday, it is as raw as a freshly cut yellow onion.

I quit my job on Friday. Well, I gave notice. Today I will discover the actual departure date. It's a long story, and I will share it later. Just know, as I assured a scolding Leiney, it wasn't a rash decision. This has been brewing since July or early August and--truth be told--since my second day on the job when I found out the promised bonus was not coming, nor other promised perks. 

Yes, I can verify I am on the road to clinical depression. Not sure I will get there, given my penchant for getting lost and my reticence to ask for directions. That health status did not inform this decision. I missed my cardiac rehab this morning, that may have been the inertia of mental illness. I am sitting in my truck feeling all sorts of disappointment in myself. I did motivate to go buy food at the grocery store--and a treat or two for Willow. 

I need to buy my ticket for family weekend at Holyoke today or tomorrow. Jane let me know she isn't going, a change in circumstance which is irksome but not otherwise troubling. As I think about it, she probably expected me to pay for her separate room. She knows, now that I am leaving work, that isn't happening.[when I spoke to her later I learned tickets are $1200 bucks r/t, ouch].

Entry 2

Seattle hired me back. It will likely be temp to permanent. I look forward to it.

Comments

  1. CherylSeptember 20, 2023 at 11:02 AM

    Well, unemployment didn’t last long. Congratulations on the new/old gig.

    I’m hesitant to make assumptions on someone I never actually met but I think your instincts about Jenny are probably right inasmuch as I suspect she was incapable of loving anyone — at least as you or I would define love. It’s one of the great tragedies of her life if I am correct.

    But enough of my armchair analysis. Please go outside. Breathe in the damp, almost-fall air. And know that depression is a demon you can beat in the long run, even if it wins out some days.

    ReplyDelete

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