kvetching up

Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, 1628. Entry 1 I felt better with the sun out. It leavens my depression, not lifting it completely, but enough to relieve what is otherwise unrelenting. While the sun was rea balm, I crave the darkness when I am blue. I wrap it around me like a blanket each night, and curse the longer days. While i hate the gray and darkness of winter in general, being swallowed by darkness is nature's metaphor for what I crave.   William  styron, in Darkness visible, a memoir about his depression written well before anybody was listening to Prozac, describes the "gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain." For me it's an ache, a nagging beast reminding me I am still here. I think my flavor of depression is less acute and yet longer lasting than Stryon's, but that is only speculation. If his was a failed transmission, stopping him dead in his tracks, mine is more like haivng the low air light for the tires...

Entry 1     9:11 a.m. The blissful memories of raising our children in the big craftsman back in the day still hangs in my mind.  On the other hand, giving the house up to live in California felt right and still feels right, given the way Home? life has gone. I don't know what doors would have opened, and what doors I might have closed forever, making that decision, but I know to my core it was the right one.  That said, Jenny and I are tired of being renters, and I want her to be comfortable in her own home.   We have managed to save lots of money--strangely even more since the affair was found out. I am watching finances, and they aren't in hotels 2x a month on our dime aren't out at restaurants, nor secretly traveling together for 5 day get-a-ways to Las Vegas, or elsewhere. And yes, despite all that, despite the fact that she won't let go of that, and that I sleep on the couch, I want out of this rental and back in a home of our own.  Today we bid ...

Say it loud, say it clear You can listen as well as you hear It's too late when we die To admit we don't see eye to eye -from In The Living Years by Paul Carrack  Yesterday was actually quite nice, if I omit discovering that we were listening to the pinché motherfucker's playlist in Jenny's car.  It was obvious. Jenny isn't musically adventurous. Deep cuts from Aretha aren't something you happen upon.  It was aural assault, but I am a big boy, said nothing, and kept on keeping on. Jenny and I had breakfast with my sister Jane and her husband at Bluewater Bistro on Lake Washington.  It was pleasingly low key and nice. Jane has stepped up like no one else to show unmitigated love to Jenny.  She asks for nothing in return, and is always wanting and willing to help her, help the kids, and help me. She arranged the brunch.  She made it happen.   I spent the rest of the day working in the yard, and Jenny is feeling well enough that she cleaned out the ...

And I might be more a man  If I stopped this in its tracks And said come on, let's go home.  But she's got the wheel, And I've got nothing  Except what I have on --from Drivin' With The Brakes On by Del Amitri 9:40 a.m. Jenny made it clear that she has no intention of stopping her relationship with Eric  the pinché motherfucker, last night in therapy. It came about in an ancillary discussion.  I brought up that Jenny, despite spouting resolve  to fight her disease  over and again last night, has routinely threatened to stop chemo, as recently as last week.  I raised this point not to debunk her claim of resolve, but to tell her that I don't want her to tell me she is going to stop chemotherapy, should she make such a decision, because she can't get the affection she wants "and deserves" from me, or from  Eric  the pinché motherfucker.  I agreed that it is true she can stop chemotherapy for whatever reason she wants, but asked h...

Sunday March 28, 2021 “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” --Frank Herbert Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. --Marie Curie Today, I am living in a world where I have to prepare for the worst.  I have again spent the last few days obsessively reading medical journals on PDAC.  I don't want to believe this is incurable.  I read things like, "Most people die within 4-10 months," and that the true statistic for stage IV with distant metastases. Survival is .5% over 5 years.  We are at 7 months.  I pray for 30 more years.   How do you live in such a state without becoming fear's doppelgänger?  I don...

Kim is here for 12 days, visiting from Quakertown.  She is sleeping in what used to be my spot in the bed, long ago ceded to the invisible presence of el pinché motherfucker. Kim is the loveliest of humans. 12 days though?  I slept in the big red chair downstairs in the unheated basement rather than sleep on the living toom sectional couch, trying to maintain a modicum of privacy. Glad we got rid of the sleeper couch, I finally understand the urgency of getting rid of a couch in a room with a door. Or not. In preparation for the guest's arrival, Jenny and I cleaned and organized the bedroom closet.  We managed to fill a black lawn and leaf bag with clothes to give away. As I was winnowing my t-shirt collection, I came across the EJI t-shirt Jenny gave me as a gift after returning from Alabama in 2019.  She went with her friend "Ike" a 70-something teacher at TOPS and Eric  the pinche motherfucker. Ike wanted to see and show them the seminal sites of the civil ri...

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...