Keep Me Up Past The Dawn

Entry 1 

"Ain't it just like the night to play tricks
When you're trying to be so quiet?"

                    -from Visions of Johanna 

From Notre Dame 7.11.2018.

When Jenny was first diagnosed, I had a recurring nightmare. In a darkened room, lit only by candles in candelabra's sitting on an ornately carved dining room table, sat Mick, Omi and my mother dressed in flowing white robes, stern-faced. My mother and Omi sat across from me at one end of the table, with Mic to my right at the head of the very long table. I don't remember if they said anything to me, but I do know they were very disapproving of the way I was and had treated Jenny. Their presence was terrifying. I felt as if I was visiting the land of the dead and being adjudged a failure in my relationship with my cancer-diagnosed wife. 

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In my waking life, despite knowing it was only a dream, I was already mending my ways before the dream started happening. My habit (prior to diagnosis) of avoiding Jenny, who was at all times sulkily angry at me and prone to unpredictable explosive anger, was curbed. I was immediately attendant to her every need. I no longer banished myself to the basement and to hanging out with the girls each night to avoid Jenny's mood lability, but instead would spend my time with her, if she stayed home (and wasn't fucking around with el pinche, which had not stopped during this time). She was getting all of the attention a person can pour on someone they fear is leaving this world for good, so her mood toward me stabilized for a brief moment. She later revealed she was mad I agreed to go backpacking--she had never asked before and I was now agreeing to all she wanted to do--because it was the cancer in her mind (absolutely true) that had me easily agreeing to go (I wanted every moment with her I could get at that point). She was cheating on me throughout this month, and I imagine seeking succor in the arms of el pinche at every moment, me clueless. The whole thing is such a terrible tangle of shit, I can't sort it out. I can't kick it out of my head. I am in a place where I am ready to be out in the world again, but have this fucking monkey on my back that I can't shake off. FFS.

Lake Union, 2014.

The nightmare felt so real. I probably had it at least three times., although I am not certain because I didn't journal about it at the time. I did speak of it to others though, which is probably a reason I remember it so clearly. I can still see in my mind's eye, the room, the candles, and all of us around the table. The anger of the three parents was palpable. As I write this, I realize that I don't know if I felt it was directed at me, but in the dream I assumed it was. I was the only one there who was still amo g the living. I assumed I'd better straighten up and fly right or there would be consequences, assumed the anger was directed at me. Now, I just don't know. 

I am no Jungian--I don't even know what that means. I do know that this dream impacted my behavior. It isn't the first time. Once, in third grade I dreamed I was in love with a girl in my class and in the dream I kissed her. Every time I saw her after that, in real life, I would blush. I was convinced we would get married some day. 

I think about the dream of the three departed parents around the dining room table occasionally. While it isn't always top of mind, my recall of the dream is never far away. I have had a history of recurring dreams and nightmares, but I never bothered to write them down before. I remember even talking about them, but could I talk about the substance? Nope. 

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Entry 2

Abby returns to school tomorrow. It's been a lovely week having her home. I hate to see her leave, but she will be back in a few weeks, so I need to get over it. In the meantime I am off to Portland at some point this next week to interview for a job. I am the finalist, and am looking forward to it and WILL take the job if it is offered. Not so much the Hanford job, if offered. I doubt it will be. 

Today we are going to second hand stores to look for vinyl, one of my favorite things to do back in the day. I have only done it once or twice in the last 20 years, but it used to be a regular hobby. I am looking forward to it.

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Entry 3 

9:36 AM

It's a Saturday afternoon in July. The kids are in their rooms, Leiney's downstairs in the basement, Abby's just down the hall, its door always shut when she is within. Jenny is on her back on the bed, her hands over her face, her legs bent over the edge of the bed's end. The wooden blinds are shut above the bed and on the wall closest to the neighbor's house, leaving those facing the apartment building wide open. I am standing at the end of the bed as Jenny is speaking to me in distressed tones. "I am the worst person in the world. You have no idea how awful I am." I think its simple depression--I am not going to be aware, let alone understand BPD and narcissism for months if not years. I scoff at her beating herself up. I tell her that what she is saying is ridiculous. She isn't an awful person, I say, think of all the good you do in the world. I offer a litany of good works she has done. Her work with children as a teacher and as a camp counselor is enough to have her lionized or canonized and beatified.  "You have no idea how awful I am, deep down. I am a terrible person," she says, "You just don't know." Instead of pushing her to divulge these things which make her so awful, there are none in my estimation at the time, with exasperation showing in every word uttered, my words making it clear my eyes are rolling like a 12 year old's hearing a dad joke, I tell her she needs to get a therapist. 

This dark night of the soul, which took place before she was diagnosed, and would recur on occasion after diagnosis, felt to me like a strange grandiosity, where she was seeking, if not

Seattle Sunset from Sodo, date unknown.

absolution, confirmation that her ideas were madness. I certainly played that tune until the fiddle strings broke, despite my tone-deafness. In retrospect, having the understanding of BPD I have now, these evocations, these admissions of self-hatred really reflect autoplastic attacks on the self characteristic of borderline personality disorder. I mean, given her co-morbid narcissism (Was it NPD? I haven't thought about it much or researched it, but know it is possible) she may have been both feeling that terrible and fishing for a response that denied it as a way to get narcissistic supply, I suppose. I don't know. Had I been a more attentive partner I would have really pushed her harder to go to a therapist. It isn't that I just suggested it that day. I followed up several times, and she did eventually get some SSRIs, but that I didn't understand that this dark afternoon of the soul signified much more than simple depression. 

As time went on, I discovered during that same period and up until she died, she also demonized me to others on a regular basis. I was Hannibal Lecter, Buffalo Bill, and Donald Trump all rolled-up into a big ball behind my back, and eventually to my face when I rejected her demands I accept the affair--excuse me--pretend that the affair didn't exist until she got better. I was an abuser for telling her friends that abetted her cheating and denigrated me--never once did I hurl invective or yell at them--that they were not my friends any longer. I was an abuser when we argued about the affair. I think the most poisonous thing about this is I didn't at the time understand that the entirety of this game, which I had unwittingly played for 30 years, was actually abuse. Narcissistic abuse. How did I not see this? How did I not understand the role I was playing over and over and again?