Fucking February Fucking 8th Fucking 20 Fucking 21

 Well, what I actually wound up writing in Facebook was "Fucking February".  And I cut out that part about "a date which will live in infamy."  Silly to compare my own broken heart to a national disaster.  

So not last night but the night before....

no, 24 robbers did not come knocking at my door.  I awakened just before 2:00 am to the overhead light being switched on and Will saying, "it's okay - you can stay in bed".  He was half dressed.  I looked at the bedside clock and noted it was 1:48.  

I got up and said, "Sweetheart, are you all right?"   He nodded.  Then I said, "It's just 2 in the morning.  Are you sure you want to get up now?"

He was surprised and decided to go back to bed.

Yesterday morning he got up when I was doing stuff downstairs.  I heard him walking around.  I went upstairs and he asked where I'd been and I explained.  Then I poured him a bowl of Special K with whole milk and put it on the table with his pills and banana.  I went outside to do yard-work and he went back to bed.   A little while later I went in to see him.  He wasn't asleep.  He asked if there was a dog in the room.  I asked him the dog's name and he couldn't remember either of them.  Then I asked him who I was.

He didn't know.  Then he guessed I was "Jennifer 2" (Jen is his twice a week dinner-maker, carer).  Later in the day, during two other questionings (one by the nurse, one by me) he said that I "lived in the house with him," that my name was KaKay, and, late in the evening, guessed that we were "good friends."

So I announced it on Facebook and then went for a long, retail therapy walk downtown.  For awhile I was nauseous and my knees felt weak.  When I got downtown I bought stuff -- a fancy hoody, some earrings, some new underwear for Will, etc etc.  Spending enough to help me feel the money as a balance to the existential despair.

by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

When I got home I found that my good friend Jim had sent me a zoom in my absence, asking if I wanted to talk face to face.  He's a good guy.  Many of my friends posted to me on Facebook where I asked for prayers from those who are good prayers and postcards from my "beloved atheist and agnostic friends."

But what I really, really, need is someone to hold me and tell me that everything is going to be okay.  Oh, yeah, I know what you'll say.  "If you're such a Christian now, what about that Jesus guy?"  Well, he may be incarnate somewhere still, but here in Bend his incarnation is only in the bodies of other humans.  I need to be held by someone who knows me.

As my sweetheart no longer does.

Wackadoodle 2

 I'm up and sitting over the heat outlet with my laptop.  It's 6:30 am.

I say good morning.  We have an interchange about the snow.  Sort of.  He says it's cold.  He says this a few times a day.  He is wearing his nightshirt over an undershirt and socks.  When I speak I realize he's not understanding me but he's smiling.  I get up and give him a big hug.  

I ask if he wants a cookie and he nods.  So I get him a ginger snap.  Then he says,"And your grandmother wants cookies. She says she needs 18 cookies for . . . her school class everybody."  He has a huge smile and seems quite happy about what he has said.

I smile back and say,"Would you lie a maple cookie too?"

"Oh, yes," he says. 

Then he went back to bed with the cookie, saying something more about "your grandmother."

Nonviral Memes

 I haven't been doing much creative work lately.  Here are a couple of things.

Problematics of Friendship and Therapy

Melinda and Bertrand (not their real names) are important people in my life, people I've known since childhood, people who regularly express love for me. They both have a long history of buying me nice presents, so in that way of gifts their love is expressed well.  But in the way of presence, a way I have needed from each so much, each has failed me.  I mean before this past year, before COVID made travel difficult or impossible. One lives three hours from me and the other five hours by plane.  Neither one has offered to come see me, to help me physically, to be with me even for a short time during these past five terrible years.  Oh, Melinda did come over to help me out during a couple of events when I asked her to do so.  But she hasn't voluntarily come over for just no reason (oh, unless there was an event she wanted to attend).  And the last time she did she reacted with strong, critical language when I was expressing grief in public.  And each of them finds it difficult to communicate without at some point burying a criticism of me into their communication.  Sometimes the criticism is shrouded in advice.  Sometimes it's just the sort of snark we all participated in as children.  I now believe that such snark is damaging to one's mental health.  I believe this because I've been in therapy for centuries and taken the loving counsel of therapists to heart.  Neither of them has done enough therapy, IMHO.  

I've learned a lot over the years from a variety of therapists, some good, some bad.  The worst one was a psychiatrist with whom I spent just an hour and a half before walking out and getting a good, publishable poem out of it, readable in this collection.  But the two most recent therapists have been especially helpful.  I finally started connecting the dots of my life and my relationships, especially the relationships with Melinda and Bertrand, which were evoking so much uncontrolled sadness.  I came to see that my self-hatred was being reinforced by two of the three people I loved most in the world.  NOT PURPOSEFULLY, I need to add.  They were just treating me in the way they often had, with loving condescension.  

 Of course on my side, I have been very raw the past five years as my life grew more and more limited along with Will's slow slow slow decline.  And as I overused weed more and more.  So my interpretive abilities are different from those of people who aren't living with the disappearing every day.

One therapist also lead me to James Hollis, who has been very helpful for me as I walk through my senior years. Hollis taught me that "every relationship begins in projection and ends in loss."  (I have a friend who argues with this as she is able to have a relationship with the dead.  I'm not so fortunate.  My dead stay dead -- Oh, Mike, how I have missed you, off and on, these 34 years since your death.) 

So I've recognized that part of what I project onto Melinda and Bertrand is my childhood relationship with them AND my primary caretakers (my older sister and mother).  My primary caretakers were either inside my mind or utterly absent, loving me or being cruel. Here and not here.  (And one of whom occasionally tied me up - but we won't go to the life issues that resulted from THAT.)  So I can be diagnosed as someone with PTSD and attachment issues.  Over the years, I've tended to be VERY attracted to people like my older sister and mother as lovers (but usually with peni).  My most recent therapy has shown me that my two oldest friends also have my mother's characteristics so I projected on them WAY too much intense feeling.

As this post attests.