monologue

“So this normalization-- it’s a defense mechanism. You’re forced to normalize it; otherwise, every time it recurs, it’s like the raw shock and pain of the first assault. So you normalize it. Somehow you’re able to dial down the volume of it all. And after a while, it becomes just another experience, another piece of your life, mixed in with all the other pieces. There are good pieces. You really can’t remember those, though. The bad stuff pervades. It hovers. It clings to you. The happiness burns bright, for sure. But the darkness burns brighter. And longer. And so, years later, decades later, you look back at the abuse and think of it as-- yes, it was painful, but it’s simply something that happened. You really think: it’s just something that happened. You believe that your childhood experiences, the trauma-- you think that’s the rule and not the exception. But you’re wrong. You assume most everyone has a troubled childhood. You believe most everyone grows up in a dysfunctional home. But no. See, you’ve normalized it. It’s become internalized until one day you realize-- and begin to accept!-- your childhood was traumatic. Your experiences were terrible. Actual terror. And they altered the course of your life before you got the choice to choose otherwise. And those experiences, they’re still with you today. Only now you understand they manifest as the Anger (and its quickness!). The Anxiety. The obsessive traits. That pervasive feeling of brokenness. You now understand that your amygdala-- your amygdala has no chill! Those experiences altered its ability to appropriately assess the sensory input. You’ve got hair-trigger fight or flight. Everyone is a potential threat, so trust no one. What are their intentions? It’s best to just keep everyone away. Allow no one to come inside your mangled garden. Good news. There’s good news? Yes, you are in therapy and are thereby-- you’re beginning to understand yourself more thoroughly. You’re identifying the trauma. And accepting it. And in a perverse sense, you see A.’s situation and all its tragedy as an opportunity. A chance to start a new chapter with something with which you’ve never been familiar: optimism.”

“I’m falling apart so I can be rebuilt stronger and better.”

This morning

I woke up this morning and everything was grey. Grey and cold, everywhere. You are awake, but you feel stuck between a subtle nightmare and reality. There’s a lingering sense of unease. The anxiety is already churning in your gut, and you know there’s no going back to sleep. At least not this morning. You turn from side to side. You look at your phone, but nothing really registers. Tapping icons and scrolling pages. None of it makes sense. And none of it is pertinent to this moment. It’s just something for your brain to chew on, to occupy, temporarily, that empty space inside. But you get out of bed and realize the emptiness is everywhere. You take your morning piss, and here you are, again. Expelling waste products from your body. The kidneys filter and process, and you feel like an old machine. A machine that became obsolete months, years ago? You make your way down the stairs, and there she is: your wife, your everything, and she’s in her usual position on the couch. She turns to look at you and puts forth the best smile she can, but the sadness on her face-- like the cancer in her brain, the sadness is claiming new territory on her face. You can’t exactly pinpoint how she looks different, but her appearance punches you in the gut, in the same place the anxiety churns. So you make your coffee and stare at the small collection of dishes in the sink. You drink your coffee, which has suddenly gone cold. You eat your plastic food. The body continues to process what you feed it, but it all feels pointless. Like a machine aged to obsolescence, it relies on routine to simply exist. Your brain, however, is locked. The gears don’t move, and everything is locked. Frozen in place. And the grey and cold. It’s everywhere.

You are here

You stare blankly ahead at a mess of leaves and limbs. Your eyes eventually gaze out, and what you see becomes a smeared palate of moving colors and shifting shadows. Your eyes are out of focus, and you become aware of the breath sneaking in and sneaking out of your body. You feel your chest rise and fall with the rhythm of the diaphragm. And none of this makes sense. You observe your thoughts, and then a ghost appears. The apparition is a memory of your mother’s house. It’s 2008, maybe 2009, and it’s springtime, and there you are, seated on the porch next to Sister. A soft breeze floats across your face, and there’s anger inside of you. Denial manifests itself as anger, and you’re still grieving the loss of Sister. The woman sitting next to you isn’t her. This damaged soul’s descent into a drug-induced hell was well underway, and she had changed, seemingly from within. Arrests, jail time, plea bargains and a stint in drug court, and eventually prison. In a prison in Plainfield she would write you a letter. She had found god. She realized where she had erred. And once she was out of that place, she would make things right, rededicate herself to motherhood and focus on raising her son. But god never sticks, and the taste for illicit chemicals always returns. And then dad died. Stepdad would pass nine months later (I hope it was painful for him). And thirty days later, mom, crippled by losing the other half of her co-dependency, would die. And three months later, dearest sister would be found, dying, by police officers conducting a welfare check. She died in an emergency room after CPR became a meaningless exercise. And the apparition disperses. And you are sitting here, now, gazing into shades of green shifting, as your chest moves in tandem with your diaphragm. And you realize the peculiar nature of memory and appreciate its power and magic. “Dinner’s ready,” your wife says, her voice breaking your gaze.

And you are here.

Become unrestrained

She had a headache today. It was mild, and two tablets of Tylenol resolved it, but she had a headache today. Before A. got the diagnosis, she was plagued by headaches. Many severe and unrelenting. So is this the beginning? Is the tumor beginning its new march now that the assault of radiation has ceased?

You wonder how soon she will be taken from you. You kiss her goodnight, and as you pull away from her you keep your eyes on her. Could this be our last night together?

Soon afterward she’s sleeping and the gravity of everything comes swelling through your placid exterior. Your vision becomes blurred and the swelling continues to bubble, so you quickly leave the bed, then the room, and you find a distant corner in the home you share and you become unrestrained. Everything comes pouring out. Your heart rate accelerates and everything is coming at you and nothing is stopping it just keeps swelling and rising and you don’t know how you’ll make it to the next minute and then DONE. Everything settles. You grab a tissue, dab your eyes and blow your nose. You swallow a beta-blocker, take a deep breath in, then push everything out until your belly is clenched. I’m fine. I’m OK. And you crawl back into bed, cover yourself, and try not to be terrified about what comes next.

Sadboy

You listen to sadboy music with the lights down low and a candle burning on the nightstand. Sitting in bed, alone, you gaze at the wall ahead of you, thinking about all that lies ahead of you.

So much pain.

And the grief is overbearing.

You’re drinking whiskey, straight no chaser.

You’re drinking whiskey, something to chase, or maybe temporarily displace, a seething mass destined to destroy you, so you take off your tee shirt and beat your chest.

You arch your spine to thrust forth your sternum. And you beat your chest and scream at the gaping chasm of the cosmos, challenging it to strike you down where you sit, alone,

on a bed with the lights down low.

Nudged from a pier, you are now on your own

Today was A.’s final day of proton radiation. She will undergo an MRI in a couple of weeks to assess the tumor’s status and will likely begin another regimen of chemotherapy following that. Last week she completed the first cycle of chemo, which consisted of six weeks of vincristine. Her last dose of vincristine was canceled due to side effects, however. Her oncologist was pleased that she got five out of six doses, so that’s a win for her.

Today is bittersweet. A. can receive no further radiation, and her oncologist characterized that line of treatment as the best weapon against this aggressive tumor. She now has expended her last bullet and must now rely on chemotherapy, which can certainly slow the tumor’s growth, but that therapy is less focused and carries with it myriad side effects that can limit its use. How will the tumor behave now that the precision protons are gone? How many “good days” do we have left?

As I write this A. and I are joyriding a ferry to Bremerton. I’m typing and she’s knitting. Once we arrive, we’ll reboard the craft and head back to Seattle. I can remember our first ferry ride after we arrived here in 2014. It was a special trip for both of us; neither of us had ever been on a ferry, and riding one was one of our first Seattle experiences. We rode to Bainbridge Island. Shopped a little. Grabbed a bite to eat. It was a nice day. Today’s voyage is a celebration of sorts. A welcomed break from the norm now that her five-days-a-week treatment is finished.

I’ve spent the last ten years of my life with A. When you spend that amount of time with someone, they color nearly every facet of your life in ways you could never imagine. For the rest of my days ferries -- just the idea of a ferry -- will be colored by my days with A. I will remember this trip. I’ll remember our first ride. At some point, once I return back to work, a patient is sure to mention something about a ferry, and A. will then be there, inside my mind, a memory from a different life.

Affirmations

I am falling apart so I can be rebuilt stronger and better.

I admire the strength I didn’t know I had.

I can be kind to myself.

I can forgive myself for the mistakes I made when I didn’t know better.

It’s ok to take care of myself first, that will give me the strength that I need to help ___.

— from Therapist 02/07/2022

Return

When I started this space over two years ago I had no idea what the near future would hold for me and my wife A. Yes none of us truly know what the future holds, but one can never prepare themself for the sudden shock of a cancer diagnosis, especially when it’s a brain malignancy.

On December 10, 2021, my partner for ten years, A., and a day before her 36th birthday, was diagnosed with an extremely rare and aggressive brain cancer. She likely has a year, at most, until it overcomes her. She’s lost vision in her left eye and the right eye is impaired but not, as yet, to a significant degree. She’s currently undergoing proton radiation and chemotherapy. The primary limiting factor for her at this time is fatigue, which is expected given her therapies. She’s relatively pain free and still independent with all activity.

Throughout our many years together A. has rarely allowed herself to express any kind of vulnerability. Lately, however, this curtain has been wearing thin and starting to tear.

Yesterday in the late afternoon and in our living room, we hugged. Standing there, the two of us, she started to cry. “Thank you for the happiest decade of my life... I’m not sure how much time we have left.”

…

A. has been my partner for ten years. She’s my confidante. My wife. The love of my life. And my best friend. She’s practically my everything (given my social circle is nearly nonexistent). And I will be utterly lost without her.

The size of my pain is too immense to calculate. To witness your spouse slowly fade from life… to see joy vanish… it takes your breath away. At the end of day, when I’m wide awake in bed and as she sleeps, my heart aches. Literally. Your brain struggles to understand, which initiates a cardiac response from the dump of stress hormones, and your heart struggles to keep up. The pounding. With arms extended you see your hands bump bump bump bump with each beat. Heart strain, when prolonged, can lead to acute coronary syndrome, atrial fibrillation, and heart failure.

…

I actually started this space over two years ago but didn’t publish it (and didn’t contribute to it for the last year and a half) until yesterday. I feel like publishing it will incentivize me to write, as well as rediscover my camera (my photographic pursuits have decreased significantly since the pandemic began). I’m hopeful these artistic expressions will prove therapeutic once again.

For those who dare, my previous blog is xxxxxxxxxxx. I wrote it from 2005-2011 and, from what I remember of it, was frequently a dark and, at times, disturbing space. I was dealing with some real mental health issues at the time. And at some point over the last year? two years? those issues, or maybe the same forces that drove those earlier issues, resurfaced. For the first time in my life I began seeing a mental health professional in October 2021, and I regret not seeing one sooner.

Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to articulate is that A.’s diagnosis and all its ramifications have tested my mental health like nothing previous. My old blog was an outlet, a creative outlet that allowed me to cope, or at least attempt to cope, with my sister’s addictions, mom’s alcoholism, and my own faulty wiring (and so much more!). Many of those dark urges are back and pose a much greater threat now then they did then. So I’m back on the interwebs with a new blog. We’ll see how it goes.

mc