dying

February 15, 2022

The Soundtrack of My Life – 6 – I’m Not Okay

This song is my go-to emo ballad. I scream it at the top of my lungs until every ounce of breath has left them. I’m left gasping for air but it’s well worth it. No song evokes my inner rage more than this. The sudden build up and explosion of music brings to mind a big wheel perched at the top of a steep hill. With an unexpected push, I’m launched forward. My destination is only a hope as I’m hurtling downhill. The plastic pedals and wheels spinning uncontrollably. All I can do is keep my legs elevated out as not to get my pants knotted and twisted. Or, worse, have the skin stripped from my shins. The intro perfectly encapsulates the trajectory of my life from this point.

In a roundabout way I started to tell these little stories linearly. I hadn’t intended to do that, but that’s just the magic of writing sometimes. It takes me where it wants to go. And I blindly follow.

For a very brief moment my life was good. My husband had I had worked out our relationship. I met josh. I had finally passed my real estate appraiser’s exam and received my license. And I graduated Summa Cum Laude with my AA. My outlook was nothing but clear skies. Then began the downward descent.

I was having some pain and decided to go to the doctor. They did a CT scan of my abdomen and it was there that they noticed I had an enlarged prostate. They informed me of this little fact as I was on my way to the eye doctor for what turned out to be a bad case of pink eye. All-in-all it was a lovely day.

They sent me for bloodwork and more tests. At this point I had already decided that I had prostate cancer. What else could it be? I told my husband and boyfriend that I had no desire to treat it. It could lead to erectile dysfunction and I wasn’t about to live that life. Hard pass. (That joke was for us.) Both of them protested. It is one of the most treatable cancers and if left alone could spread to other parts of the body and turn into much more deadly forms of the disease.

After a rough couple months the final diagnosis was I just have an enlarged prostate. Along with an enlarged spleen. Two things no one would ever want to be big. I guess I just have all the luck, y’know.

Crisis averted! However it absolutely opened my eyes to the fear of disease and made me hyperaware of respecting someone’s wishes.

About a year after that my mother began acting very strange. It started with her speech. She was unable to say certain words and would explain how she could see it in her mind but couldn’t verbalize it. We went and had a brain scan done and the doctor ruled it a non-issue. The nurse practitioner recommended memorizing and saying bible verses. (I rolled my eyes so hard at that suggestion.)

Then my mother took a hard left turn. She talked about the walls of the house leaning. The floor feeling wet. And she would not stop shuffling papers. The real moment of absolute horror was when my mother sat and read and re-read the same single piece of paper for 30 minutes. It occurred to me that something was very, very wrong.

We went back and did another scan and in that time she had 7% brain mass loss. An average person with Alzheimer’s is usually at 3%. The next time we saw the doctor it was conclusive. She was in the early stages of the disease. The nurse whispered it to me while my parents sat at the other end of the exam room. Why I was the only one she bothered to tell is beyond me. Don’t you want to tell the person who has it?

Since then it has been every nurse or doctor whispering shit to just me and not her. “She can’t live on her own.” Yeah? Tell her that! My mother doesn’t believe me when I tell her stuff. Of the few things she can say without any trouble is: “that’s what you say.”

I remember the night my mother’s diagnosis became undeniable. I put this song on and screamed it all the way home, crying. All I could think about was how she would have all of her memories, her words, her identity ripped from her. In the end she will basically die because her body will have forgotten how to live.

But you really need to listen to me
Because I’m telling you the truth
I mean this, I’m okay! (Trust me)

December 2, 2021

Midnight Memories

So to set the scene I recommend listening to “Blinding Lights” by Loi. It’s probably the best version of the song and the tone of it completely encapsulates the memory I’m going to share.

The first thing my husband ever said to me was through an instant message on AOL. He let me know that he and Diego were still together and not knowing who he was (and being the annoying teenager I was) I continued on the conversation as if I knew him and what he was talking about. I finally dropped my charade and asked him who he was and it was then that I added him to my buddy list, cchuck77383. From then on I would message him whenever he came online because I just knew things with him and Diego were on the way out.

This all happened at the very end of September 2003 after an abrupt break-up with my third boyfriend. (Who has since passed of stage 4 cancer.)

I was taken by him (my husband) because he happened to share that my ex wanted him, but my husband was not even remotely interested. This made cchuck77383 immediately attractive to me.

I wasn’t a good person then and I know that now… but regardless of what got me to meet with this man doesn’t matter now. I am still here.

After things with Diego fizzled out he agreed to meet me one late night at a Denny’s.

I put on “sleeping beauty” in my bedroom, snuck out my window, and drove across town to meet this stranger I had only ever spoke with online.

He didn’t tell me what he drove, but I knew he had arrived the moment his white mustang drove past me. For the next hour or so we sat in a booth talking, while I watched him nervously spin his silver Motorola flip phone, twitch his nose, and run his index knuckle up his phantom mustache.

For whatever reason he liked me and invited me over to his apartment downtown to watch a movie.

The first thing we ever watched together was Philadelphia. Which, if you don’t know, is the story about a man dying of AIDS. He swears now he had never seen it, but I remember him telling me it was a good one to watch. However he had also just started collecting DVDs at the time and it is highly likely that he hadn’t. I tend to rely to heavily on my own memory. And I am (at times) wrong.

That early morning, when the movie had ended, he walked me to my car and kissed me, wishing me good night. I drove away thinking I would never see him again, feeling satisfied that I got to make-out with the guy my ex wanted but couldn’t have.

Little did I know that this dude would then call me every subsequent day and talk my ear off. There isn’t a day since that he hasn’t. It kills me most to know that his disease will eventually take that from me. I have spoken with him at length ever since then and to think I will have to face a day where I don’t just cuts my gut.

August 30, 2021

Saying What Has Been Said Before

As of last Thursday, it has been a year since my husband was officially diagnosed with ALS.

As one does, we look back over the journey to see the differences from then to now. What I really want to do is to write this sparkling and profound story with few defeats and many triumphs but I have nothing. In addition to that, I get so caught up into trying to be inspiring that my voice gets lost in the words. What I end up writing feels forced. It feels disingenuous, which is not my goal. Ultimately, it’s not me. I write with my heart on my sleeve, with all my cards laid out for all to see. It’s the only way to be. Trying to keep out the failures and the sadness is a detriment to myself, and no one else.

The reality has put a lot of things into focus, that for so long had been fuzzy. I have suffered most with deciding if my husband was truly “the one.” I always came up with so many excuses to say we weren’t: I was too young; I wasn’t ready. All of this bullshit. I didn’t trust my gut, because it has been wrong before. So instead of enjoying what I have in front of me, I him-and-hawed trying to feel out if it was the right decision. There is no “right” answer. Ever. We just choose a path and learn. Attempting to go back and try another is pointless. There is only forward.

It’s funny, to me, saying all of that because it is the same bullshit that has been told to us over and over again. We just never let it sink because we refuse to listen. We refuse to understand. “There’s always a chance.” Maybe, but maybe not. It’s better to treat life as a “one and done” deal. Thinking that we can get back to reach what we lost is a farce we repeatedly tell ourselves to lull our mind into a false sense of security. “There’s always another chance.” Nope. We only have now.

The beauty of that belief has done some amazing things for our lives. We bought a new house. We moved. We have journeyed across the country, twice. We have seen and done things neither of us thought we could or would do. Yeah, Covid and his disability has made it more difficult, but all of those minor setbacks have paled in comparison to what we’ve experienced.

The only thing that can be truly measured, is the loss of my husband’s independence. He has to rely on me or my brother-husband to eat, to go to the bathroom, to stand without falling. His arms and hands are very nearly worthless from what he used to do. Using a cellphone is near impossible. Thank the geniuses at apple for the voice control features. Without it he wouldn’t even be able to peruse Facebook, text, or make phone calls. Technology is a bane on society, but also a fantastic tool to give one the illusion of normalcy.

I do wish there was something I could add, but there is nothing that I can say that would be any different than from the hundreds of voices before my own.

I will just reiterate that time is precious. Live in the now and don’t hesitate, for even a second. This moment is the only one you truly have. Make it worthwhile. A life of experiences is worth more than any amount of money saved.

March 22, 2021

The Struggle to Breathe

We are nowhere near the time that my husband has left me. That moment sits as a tiny spec on the horizon of my timeline, but, as with time, we march ever toward it. And knowing that it’s there, rots me from the inside.

My grief of the situation comes and goes. I have gotten to a place where I can handle it when it does exist in my headspace. Those are the days I ugly cry in my car, hoping no one in the vehicle next to me happens to look over. I am very unattractive when I cry. I literally struggle to breathe, as if every breath becomes thinner and thinner and I am just gasping at air. The only other time I have experienced such tears was the time my husband and I had a brief separation.

Before we became polyamorous we basically just cheated on each other. Our relationship had turned into lies and secrets and neither one of us had the guts to be honest. The truth came out when I downloaded Grindr to cheat. I caught his profile at the end of our street, on his way to visit his dad in Palm Springs. Over the course of his brief trip I watched his account like a hawk. I was obsessed. When he returned I was honest. We struggled with things after that, and at one point I asked him to leave. He went and stayed in a hotel for a few days, and that morning I cried much like I do now. I could barely get out of bed. If I attempted to get dressed for work, I would start to cry again and my legs would buckle out beneath me. It was one of the worst mornings of my life.

At the time I didn’t understand these tears. I have cried before but never like this. And I always questions their sincerity. Even now I wonder if they’re real, or if it’s just because I am expected to feel something. I think I’m the only person who doubts such things.

After his return to our house our relationship changed. We started to communicate and eventually the truth about his infidelity came out. Instead of being angry with him I was overcome with relief. Finally, I wasn’t the worst one in the relationship. The one who cheated on an honest, dutiful, good man. At least that was the narrative I told myself, because I had repeatedly asked him if he had. He would always tell me that he hadn’t and I would feel ever worse. When I finally got the truth it felt like I could finally breathe. A gigantic weight had been lifted from our relationship and my shoulders. Since then our bond has never been stronger. All it took was the truth, and the inability (both of us have) to give up.

It seems to track that once we finally move into a better place in our marriage he would be taken from me. Even now my eyes fill with tears. I just want to scream. I want to take a sledgehammer and destroy everything in my path until I am too weak and too tired to carry on. There are days that I literally just want to die. Losing my father, my mother dwindling due to Alzheimer’s, and my husband to ALS is just too much sometimes.

Just know, I am too much of a coward and (bizarrely at the same time) too conceited to take my own life. That being said, just know that if I were hit by a car I wouldn’t try and hold on.