family

February 24, 2026

Crazy Chronicles – Episode 2

The actions that I took yesterday gave me a sense of pride. I knew what I had to do, which was to reach out to my therapist, and instead of my usual, “I know, I should,” I did. Evidently how I worded my email to him concerned him in such a way that within five minutes he called me.

“What’s going on, Josh?” He asked.

I began to explain the entire weekend and how I had felt. For someone who I feel, at times, just keeps me as a patient because I’m relatively low maintenance he was on-it when it came to my crisis. We talked on the phone for about five minutes. He listened to me and then responded by reminding me of all that I have gone through in the past few years. As a result, I am still in the process of grieving my husbands death. He explained that grief can manifest as anxiety or panic attacks because it’s our bodies response to the lack of the person’s presence.

“This person should be here.”

“It’s like they were completely erased from your life.”

The reminder really struck a chord in me and once I understood, and accepted this answer, it all made sense. I look back on the past few times I’ve had these episodes and each one was either directly or in a roundabout way, connected to his memory.

The first time was when we were driving to visit our Papa Bill in Palm Springs and I lamented, to myself, on the drive that I really missed Charlie. He was the chatty Cathy who could strike up and maintain a conversation about headlamps. He could make it so engaging that it would spark another topic and then another, like a firecracker. Without him there that day, the car ride was near silent. We had music playing but there was no discourse. To add to the vacuum of sound, it was also the first road trip with the three of us where charlie wasn’t included. The weight of his absence so very, very obvious. It made my heart hurt.

In that event I think the grief was too much for me to comprehend and it manifested as a “heart attack,” because a large part of my heart was no longer there.

The last two were not so much his absence but the meaning in it. He wouldn’t have approved of my BFs and my trip to SLO (it was a “sexy” trip) and then this past weekend the three of us were hanging out in the living room, without him, talking about how the brother-husband had a date with a new man.

Conceptually I understand that life goes on but… The heart doesn’t know or even really care. It wants what it wants. Mine wants my Charlie back. I am utterly lost without him. He successfully held this crazy together and now I am left to do it by myself.

To top everything else off, the past couple months I have been plotting and planning my proposal to the BF.

Charlie always joked, before he was ever diagnosed with ALS by the way, that when he died I would: 1) bring my boyfriend to his funeral, which I did do, but he brought his; and 2) that I would be remarried soon after he was gone.

I hated those jests. It felt like he was discounting my feelings for him or not believing that I absolutely I loved him. “Accusing me” of “moving on” felt like I was trying to erase him or, at the very worst, that I never cared for him. If there ever was a doubt in my heart that I “didn’t really love him,” caring for as he lost the ability to do literally anything and my subsequent immense longing has wiped awat any doubt. That man was my everything. Some may scoff, “how can that be, you had an open relationship? You had a boyfriend!”

To that I say, love is not precise. There is no single picture of what it should, could or does look. I believe that two heterosexual men can love another more than a spouse and not have it sexual in any sense of the word. Sex does not equal love, and vice versa. Combining them as one thing is minimizing the immense potential of the two. If they both work out, then you’ve got lightning in a bottle. Cherish it. However sometimes our hearts and minds are compatible, like the person was made specifically for you, but in the bedroom you both want entirely different things. Trying to meet in the middle is one way to build a strong bond, but sometimes there are things that are just impossible to bridge because of expectations. There are moments where even when your partner tries, there is a mental block reminding you “they’re not into this” and that kills potential in the attempt. I have found from my own experience at least, and even with my husband.

We want our partners to be happy and if that’s not doing that well… what do you do? In my opinion, suffering in silence is not an option. It’s what led me to cheating over and over again.

Instead of us breaking up, because at the core of our relationship was love and trust (I don’t know how it survived with my infidelity), we decided to open our marriage. After which, I believe, with every fiber of my being, it brought us closer together. It was all based on honesty and communication. We had a set of rules that guided our relationship and dictated what was and wasn’t okay. It wasn’t some lawless wild west where we could just do whatever the fuck we wanted.

I could wax poetic about non-monogamy for hours, but that isn’t the point of this post.

Today I am doing so much better. I reached out to a professional and I listened to his expert advice. My word choice is deliberate. Most people hear what they’re told, but do they listen? Do they comprehend how it applies to them, in that moment? I got lucky because I am someone who spends hours ruminating in my mind. The bitch WILL NOT shut up.

Even with all of that progress, however, I still think I’m dying, but aren’t we all?

February 10, 2026

Does This Clown Taste a Little Funny To You?

Last night was a weird one for me. I spent most of my evening laying in bed “doom scrolling” details in the Epstein files. It got to a point that I started to physically feel fearful and repulsed, as if I had just watched some grotesque gore flick with a terrifying villain. Did that discourage me from continuing further? Oh no. I am a glutton for punishment and chaos.

At some point in my information consumption I had my interest piqued enough on the topic of Kuru that I started researching it.

Kuru is a disease that is caused by damaged proteins that have accumulated in the brain. It causes neurological issues such as: tremors, speech issues, dementia, muscle loss, and balance issues. All of these things I have witnessed in my mother, father, and husband until their untimely demise. Could this be the answer to why in the last 5 years I lost them all with very similar issues?

My mind spiraled out of control. In the abstract I can understand that this is just my brain trying to rationalize the abrupt disrupt and loss of my family. I get that. But… what if it’s my answer?

Well, the only problem with them having kuru is that it requires the consumption of human flesh, primarily the brain, that is tainted with… kuru. According to one of my MANY google searches, the last reported case was in 2004. This is a very rare and uncommon disease. In the history of the illness, it was primarily witnessed in a tribe that had a ritual of consuming their dead family members after their passing.

To my knowledge… My parents and husband were not cannibals. However, people do have their secrets. I didn’t know my husband was cheating on me, as I was actively cheating on him, until I caught him.

What this thought does do is lend credence to this fear that I have had over these last 5 years: that somehow/someway we were exposed to something that caused all of this.

When I would voice this to my husband, before he passed, he would immediately fire back, “Then why aren’t you showing signs?”

This is where I confess to the world that I am a chicken nugget and french fries man. I am the pickiest eater and won’t really venture out of my culinary comfort zone unless I am peer pressured into doing so. (Side note: I had a friend who had a serious peanut allergy tell me to try stuff at a buffet with a remark “it’s not going to kill you.” Shortly afterward we had to rush to the store to get Benadryl because the bitch didn’t bring her eppy pen.)

What if my family was given, without their knowledge or consent, human flesh to eat?

I have this really random memory of our trip to Lake Tahoe, where the wait staff watched us eat our meal, in an entirely empty restaurant. The reason it stuck out in my memory is because of how bizarre it was that they watched us… and how we were the only ones in the restaurant at dinner time.

All of these fears and assumptions are made worse by the very fact that we have only received half of the millions of files the DOJ possesses. And these are the files they were willing to submit. What’s in the other fucking half?

Now, do I really think that is the answer? No.

Is it just me trying to find meaning in their sudden deaths? Yes.

However… We cannot rule out this as a cause.

The only real certifiable answer I do have, that this is not the case, is that when my husband and I went to the Mayo Clinic for a second opinion to his ALS diagnosis, they tested him for everything while we were there. I imagine… that might have also included tests that would reveal signs of kuru. Like I said, it’s caused by deformed proteins. It’s not bacterial or viral.

(As I am writing this, I just had a random memory of a doctor asking him if he ate human flesh at one of his appointments where we all just laughed it off.)

In the big scheme of things, why does this even matter? They’ve already been taken from me. There is nothing that can be changed and having an “answer” does nothing but further fuel my confusion. Where would this have happened?! Why?

I need to just accept that life sometimes shops at Costco and we were just working through our bulk box of death.

January 9, 2026

The Soundtrack of My Life – 46 – A Minor Incident

Since spotify got off their bullshit to stop running ads for ICE, I have made a happy return to the streaming platform, even though it still uses AI for it’s suggestions and “wrap-ups.” And I thought “why not do another ‘soundtrack post’ with one of the most depressing fucking songs?” So, here it is.

Back when Charlie and I started dating, I got this album for myself from Best Buy (our favorite store at the time, since one had opened up in town) with a Christmas gift card. For whatever reason, this soundtrack makes me think of Christmas time. Maybe it’s because that was when I first saw it or because, of the two main characters, one of them lived on the wealth of their father’s Christmas song.

Also, I have this weird habit that when I fall into “depressive episodes” I will watch the same film on repeat. This was the film, at that time, that I had in a loop.

The story telling/writing in it is phenomenal and has some of my favorite actors in it: Rachel Weisz and Toni Collette. (Rachel Weisz is one of the 3 women who could make my forsake my homosexual life for a hetero one.) The musical score and the songs elevate all of this to another level for me. I had to have the soundtrack as my own.

As I do, I became hyper-fixated on 3 songs on the album. The one of above being one of them. It’s the song written for the scene when Marcus’s mom tries to end her life. The lyrics in it address the loss of words one experiences when faced with someone who attempted and, luckily, failed in their effort. So, what that had to do with Charlie potentially taking a job in Iraq at the time is beyond me.

The logic of teenagers is obtuse at best. They’re melodramatic and find resonance in things that don’t really pertain to certain scenarios. As like this one.

Charlie was an over the road trucker at the time, but he wasn’t making as much money as he wanted. He was always looking out for the next, better opportunity to further his ultimate goal: to be filthy rich like his dad.

As the made up war in Iraq/Afghanistan was killing innocent civilians and rebels fighting the imperial invaders over their oil, a job opportunity was presented to him by his father. His father worked for Oxy at the time. The salary for driving an oil tanker over there paid enormously, but it also was very high risk. (Obviously.)

He toyed with the idea because he wanted the money but terrified because he didn’t want this job to end his life before it even began. I wish I could remember how long he entertained the idea. From my memory it felt like weeks but I’m sure it was just A WEEK if not DAYS. Regardless, I told him, at the time, that I would wait for him when he came back. He told me that would be dumb, but I really wanted to live that “war wife” fantasy.

So in my obsession of the above song and him potentially going off to work in a war-torn country, I dedicated and played it for him, expecting some big “oh, wow, that meant so much” from him. Which shows how little I knew of my future husband at the time. I’m surprised I didn’t hear his eye-balls rolling from across town.

What I find odd about this song is it actually pertains eerily closer to how our relationship ended than it ever did at the start. Even as I listen to it now it was almost like I was casting some magical spell over our relationship and cursing us to the fates we found.

“There’s nothing I can say to try to make you feel okay. And nothing you could do, to stop me feeling the way I do… And if the chance should happen that I never see you again, just remember that I’ll always love you.”

I feel that in my soul, as trite as it sounds. The song echoes of the helplessness one feels watching someone struggle with something you cannot change. Then there is an undercurrent of understanding, that it is out of your hands but regardless the singer will be there. Through all of it.

As it pertains to us, it almost feels like each of us takes a turn singing one verse to the other. And in those verses that I feel Charlie would sing, they bring me comfort, even though the song breaks my heart. It also highly improbable that he would have ever openly admitted those words to me, even if he meant them.

April 14, 2025

This past Saturday marked one year since Charlie passed away. I finally got the chance to read the letter he had written for me. Of everything there the only thing that was new, or stood out, was when he used my nickname for him as the salutation. That was where I broke down.

Everything else in it were sentiments he and I had spoken to each other over the many years together. The one thing that made our broken relationship work was that we were never afraid to wade into difficult topics. We never shied away from the truth.

It is nice to have them in writing though. Sometimes my mind likes to lie to me and say that he never forgave me. Which, in itself is silly. We spent 20 years together. Someone who hasn’t forgiven you typically doesn’t dedicate even more time.

The day of, I spent with the family. We went to the zoo and just talked about him and his unforgettable personality. He really was one of a kind. I could really use his knowledge and point of view now. He knew what I needed to hear, when I needed it most. And if that didn’t work, he would always intervene.

This past year has been nothing but loss. Shortly after the husband passed, we lost our dog Jack. Then this week we put down our pup Lucy. She had cancer in her nasal cavity. It had gotten to the point that she couldn’t breathe through her nose. Fun fact… dog’s can’t breathe through their mouths when they sleep. At least, she couldn’t.

Then this morning, thinking of my aunt, I sent her a message to ask about her and her kids. The text went acid green, instead of blue. More than likely, she probably blocked me. Which… whatever. She might as well be someone else I’ve lost too.

Unburdened by the past leaves even more possibilities for the future.