Betrayal?

 Am I betraying my sweetheart to write about him here?

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I ask myself this about every topic and every memory I share. Once, long, long ago during my first burst of writing fiction, I asked him if he minded if I wrote about him.  He said, "Yes" and so I didn't but found other intense relationships to address with pen and ink.

Later I wrote a bad novel with Will as one of the characters.  Not a lead character, no, but the loving husband of a rapacious gay man who was center to the tale.  My spouse read it and had little comment on it.  (The outside world gave about 35 rejections, one of which, by a leading gay NY editor, was actually rather "positive.)  

Once, after a poetry reading during which I'd read a revealing, published poem, I asked Will how he felt about my sharing such work.  He said, "It's all part of the literary life."

Our relationship has been filled with perceived betrayals on both sides.  But it's also been filled with a love that could contain and drown the pain of our differences.  We forgave each other over and over, though usually with actions rather than words (he was far better at this than I).

And now we are in the last, long, strange, part of our journey together.  If he understood and "felt" what was happening to him, he would be very sad.  Or he could still be as angry and frightened as he was at the start.  As it is, he seems relatively cheerful or he's asleep.  

And I think my fear of betraying him is a sign of that evil, lingering, unconscious hope that he will be my husband again and be angry and hurt that I'm writing this. 

My husband is gone.

My sweetheart is still with me.  

"I think you'll like him"

 I was thinking about when I first saw him.  I could call it love at first sight.  That's because he was my physical "type" and he was vouched for.  What happened was that my aunt Huldah Bell pointed him out to me in the darkening theater in the basement of the Fine Arts Building at Idaho State University.  We were there on a Sunday night to see a foreign film as part of the "Cinema 6" program of which Will was a leader.  That nighty it was Bergman's Virgin Spring -- definitely NOT a romance.  Before the movie started she pointed to an hirsute fellow across the isle from us -- he had long hair, a beard, glasses, and looked skinny.  He stood up tall.  Definitely my type.  A shaggy ectomorph.  Not unlike the handsome star of the film.  After pointing to him she said, "That's Will Huck, a friend of mine.  He's weird.  I think you'll like him.

I told my sweetheart about my memory just now and said that I'd always loved him and liked him.  He asked, "How is Huldah Bell?" 

I said, "She's dead."

"When did she die?"

"In 2002 or 3."

"I must have forgotten.  How could I forget that?"

"It's not important," I said.  "You remember the important things -- like that you love your dogs and your wife.  The rest isn't important."

Numbing

I wish I had the proper metaphor for the complicated grief of being a dementia carer.  Is it like having a tooth pulled for five years?  Like having one's leg cut off a millimeter at a time?

I feel some shame for my current relapse into weed addiction.  I was straight all through May and then fell again.  I will need to sober up again soon in order to do my proper work as a facilitator in an ongoing church program.  I sort of look forward to getting clear again, although I know the first

two weeks will be very hard.  And then I will be able to "feel my feelings" again.

Great.  Just fucking great.  

I think about my former therapist and his way of asking if I was numbing myself, his tone telling me that it was exactly what I should not be doing.  Why is it that it's okay to numb some physical pain but not emotional pain?  

My current therapist understands why I'm numbing.  She's not supportive of my choice but she doesn't shame me.