Personal Journal

Retracing Bad Footprints

More troubles for Jean, and it really struck me how miserable this must be for her. I’ve found that my empathy hasn’t been what it should be, and I’ve been pretty impatient with her. I don’t know how much of that has been expressed in my actions, and I don’t think too much of it has. I wish a were bigger than that, but it is a stress on me, too, I must recognize.
More sickness today for her, and extreme weakness. I think, and it’s very regrettable, that I have more understanding of the patterns than she does. This happened last time, although I don’t remember if it lasted this long. She forgets that chemo drags her way down. I’m the one who can track these issues independently of having to experience them. I notice that now doctors talk to me a lot when they’re asking about symptoms and patterns. That bothers Jean, but it’s rather appropriate, since I can say what I see, in addition to her saying how she feels.
It’s not so bad now, the self-criticism I experienced this morning. I’m actually high again today, just a little before bedtime to help me feel comfortable writing.
I’m caught between having to accept the denial, and being insensitive at times, or incorporating the reality, and being filled with intense sorrow, and possibly fear. If I were the latter, Jean could not really function, because my fears and sorrows would incapacitate her.

My brain’s getting ahead of me.
Let me back-track, because I see something here.
Jean has a glio-blastoma multi-forme. The most serious type of brain cancer (well, that I know of). If the diagnosis is correct, then there’s a 98 percent chance she will die from it within 3 years. Even then, the medical prognosis we’ve been given is this: she will certainly die of this, and the best hope she’s been given is 5 years.
That’s our medical diagnosis and prognosis.
And I swear to god, that I’m trying to ignore that. There are a handful of cases, a number less than 20, who I have met or heard of who are surviving this beyond those 5 years, and of those, a few show no more tumor evidence. So we hope to be like those. But the medical community is saying that in all probability, their cases were misdiagnoses, and we shouldn’t expect that.

There. I said it. See, what I’m having a hard time dealing with is that the part of my self that relies on science to define the universe is back there knowing the above, which is almost a statistical certainty about what’s going to happen to Jean.
I know Jean doesn’t live thinking about that, and I have tried not to. But it’s there, and it’s a part of my knowledge-base now. And I can hope all that I want, every bit as devoutly I am supernaturally capable of believing, and still, a part of me has integrated the fact that Jean’s probably going to die.
And I feel SO fucking guilty about that.

When I was married, I used to tell myself that I really did love my wife. That I could follow through for the rest of my life if only I could ACT like I loved her, and these two sides of me, the one that knew it wasn’t true, and the side that had promised my wife that it was, wouldn’t have to be in conflict. They were ALWAYS in conflict. And it had a rupturing effect on me.
Here we have it again.
Here’s why I am feeling that I’m not being myself, that I’m back into fragmented personas, each competing to be exactly what my immediate observers need me to be, and never what I am.
Before, when I was lying to keep a marriage from becoming a lie, I ultimately came to the conclusion that this goal had an intolerable outcome because it was achieved falsely.

And then I got my tattoo – Death-Truth-Death. Outside of knowledge of self, there is conflict. And I’ve been in this conflict again, which is why the same feelings came back.
Only this time, as much as it feels like I’m doing a harmonically identical thing via my behavior of not admitting a truth, and living as though a falsehood were true, I feel like this time the goal’s outcome is tolerable, even it is achieved falsely.

Honestly, I’m so calling my old therapist tomorrow. I totally need to go over this with her.

Here I’ve had this sort of epiphany, and I swear I don’t have any clue about what to do with the recognition of the situation…


It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn