kvetching up

Early mornings, the dogs nearby and content, music playing, alone with my thoughts, this is when the darkness comes. " Nobody said it was easy, nobody said it would be so hard ," Aimee Mann sings through her nose, reminding me that I am woefully unprepared to be alone, and irretrievably broken to move forward. I spin in circles all the time.  Grief moves at its own pace . I am sad for so much. I grieve her passing. I grieve for my girls loss of their mother. I grieve for the relationship I thought was one thing, but was another. The loss of time I could have spent with someone that loved me, that better part of my life that I will never get back, these things I mourn as well. I of misspent youth, awho always blamed myself for her anger toward me, even though I knew it to be irrational at the time. I, who believed myself so smart, to realize I am the fool, who disguised himself from himself only by not wearing harlequin and a motley. We all build sandcastles against the tide o...

The year of firsts is over. It was, less and more than I expected. Given that most of my friends who read this are women, more than1/2 of you, if coupled, will go through the year of firsts as well. I can't offer any advice, can't even identify what to do or what to avoid.  I am still lost. I still can't properly grieve, I don't know if I ever will. The rollercoaster that is loss had hidden twists and turns, unexpected hills and valleys. For me, I rode it all the way through illuminated by the fires of anger. The anger wasn't the Kubler-Ross anger over death, I made peace with Jenny's cancer when she was dying. For me, the fuel that stokes my rage keeps growing, and has everything to do with her behavior towards them and nothing to do with the affair (except for the ceaseless lying, gaslighting and the fact that she abandoned the children for el pinchè at EVERY opportunity).  Everytime I see my girls, I realize Jenny burned it all down, the world we built for th...

 Entry 1    8:00 a.m. I woke up at 2:00, then 4:30, then after 5 and just before 6.  It is going to be one of those days.  Parenting Fun I went to a financial aid seminar. I found out the odds of Abby getting any assistance outside of merit scholarships will be slim to none, given the lookback for income is two years, they will look at 2021, when we had two incomes. Some schools allow you to plead a special case, and I will, but still.  I am eating a lot of it. Generally I came home and fell right back into grief and grieving. I am not very good at this thing called living currently, but am doing my best. I am alone and lonely a good deal of the time, but don't feel like company because invariably we, or more accurately I, will begin talking about Jenny, her death, the affair. So, I am trying to just get through this. The kids are not grieving, that I can see. They are high functioning and that is good, I suppose. I just wish I could feel their relief.

 Entry 1     7:30 a.m.   I start work this morning. I look forward to trying to return to the rhythm of work and life. I am sure I am not well equipped to handle this, given it has only been two weeks, but I feel the need to do this, as best I can.  We used to be so in love: The summer of 1999 was one of the high points in our marriage. Just married over a year, we packed up the small Toyota pickup truck with all the things we would need in a family dorm, along with all our camping gear, and spent 30 days driving across the country. The truck had no air conditioning, so we would frequently use 2/60 air conditioning when it got too hot. We would roll down the two windows and drive 60 miles an hour. We saw the deepest cavern in America in Montana, cowboys and buffalo in South Dakota as we drove along BIA dirt roads. Skinheads and Lincoln's home and law offices in Springfield. People so poor on the reservation that it beggars my words to describe the livi...

Entry 1.    7:45 a.m. "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." - 1 Corinthians 13:12 If you are a person being prosecuted for a crime and are mentally ill, and a jury or judge determines you committed the act from which the charges arise, in some jurisdictions you may be found guilty, guilty but insane, or not guilty due to mental defect. The latter two will likely get you committed to a mental institution for treatment for some period of time. The more I read and reflect on the behavior that I have described herein, the more I am convinced that Jenny was mentally ill. I believe more than ever, as I have contemplated before, that she had borderline personality disorder ("BPD").  Having lived with her and experienced the bizarre nature of her behavior toward me and the kids, having read every text remaining on her phone thet she sent and received over the last several years, li...

Sorrow -- Van Gogh 1882 I want to fix her. I want to find a cure, a way to stop the suffering.  The agony is real. Ceaseless. The fear corporeal. Tonight, I started receiving harrowingly sad texts as I sat in Abby's car at YTN.  My heart broke into a million pieces again and again with each message.  I found her at home in the bathtub for the third time today, abdominal cramps from the cancer leaving her ashen and bereft. It took 3 visits the the bathroom to coax her from the now tepid water, which she had been in for over an hour.  I pulled the plug, and got her up, wrapped her towel around her. Dried her off.  The sorrow in her eyes leaving knife wounds wherever they came to rest on me. Mostly, she stared vacantly into space, not resolute, not resigned, not stoic.  Lost.  Even asking to no one in particular, "Is this what it was all for?"  "Can this really be it?" "Why?"  I left her alone in our cramped bathroom. Fifteen minutes later, aft...

Sacrifice Sacrifice .  Self-sacrifice to be more specific.  Its a mystery to me how one can be so oblivious.  This evening we had our regularly scheduled Tuesday tandem therapy. It was fascinating, start to finish.  The therapist, Shayla, asked how we were doing.  I was stewing, had been all day, because I was and am convinced Jenny has been seeing  Eric  the pinché motherfucker on the down low.     Jenny answered Shayla first, and said she thought things had been going pretty well, actually. I was hesitant to speak my mind.  In fact, I had been kicking around all day whether or not to remain silent, but my big mouth got the better of me.  I went on a soliloquy, not a jeremiad.  I said that I was unhappy, that I had believed that by telling  Eric  the pinché motherfucker's wife, Jenny would see the light, that something would change.  I noted that I realized now how ridiculous this idea was--magical thi...