husband

December 24, 2024

Rainy Day Ruminations

I like when I try to write a post that comes off more as a school essay than an artistic piece pouring forth from my soul. I prefer the ones that come in uninhibited. They exist to exist and serve no purpose other than to impart how I’m feeling in the moment. Think of them as literary snapshots. Little photographs I can look back on, if I ever decide to re-read anything I’ve previously posted, and say to myself “Man, I was feeling it that day.”

Today I started some ridiculous piece about how if the government banned tiktok it would do a huge disservice, other than breaking it’s only fucking laws. With the app I have learned so much about myself in this very roundabout way. Most of the videos that scroll across my FYP have to do with trauma. Haven’t a clue why… But the algorithm knows all, I suppose. I never thought I was one who had responded negatively to it. However one evening, wading the sea of my thoughts, it occurred to me that I have.

Growing up I was a very emotional child. My parents never were one to stop me from feeling them. The outside world on the other hand did not agree with this parenting tactic. So for all my mother’s efforts to make me emotionally mature, the populace had other machinations. And they will do everything to make sure they perpetuate the myth that everyone will and should fit into a mold.

As I grew up, my peers and mentors would tell me that I was being too emotional or over-dramatic. Whatever I felt or expressed was brushed aside. As a result, I chose to hide my feelings instead while suffering in silence. Regardless of my attempt my body refused to hide anything. It manifested as something else. Always. I imagine it is the same for most people. It’s why some turn to addictive substances. It’s numbing. Only then can we ‘fit.’

In the early days of dating my husband, I was already spiraling into alcohol addiction. He saw it VERY clearly. He even made a deal with me that if I stopped drinking, so would he. So, I got sober. However, without recognizing the trauma I was drinking to escape I instead to turned to sex. Having a chemical dispenser in my head, ever at the ready to dole out my own make of dopamine, was much easier to conceal and carry out.

This behavior was my husbands and my biggest hurtle. I regret so much of my past and how much I hurt him with the lies… He’s forgiven me but I can’t. I don’t like that I ever betrayed his trust.

This is the moment where I realize that this is why I write. I clack out my thought because I have all of these “big emotions” that society otherwise would tell me I’m being annoying or I need to get over. Here, on this blank page, I get to be myself. I can share on an open platform where someone, just maybe someone, will read it and I will be validated. I realized this last piece today. Finally all the points connected and I understood.

All it took was my husband dying.

So many people have graciously given me the space to share my emotions. Ones in which I thought I did not feel. Every day I worried I was some kind of monster, as if I was happy he was gone. Even though I know that is absolutely not the case. It is just that I have spent my entire life pretending to have no emotions because I was “too much” for some. And obviously I wasn’t meant to be around them, because the people who genuinely care about you will not feel that way.

When I hide my emotions they always, ALWAYS manifest as anger. Absolutely every time. Boys/Men are allowed to have anger. Anything else is unacceptable. The biggest flaw in that, especially with me, is as someone who feels things deeply my rage is worse. It’s compounded with my anguish/sadness/grief with the anger I feel with all of those in my past that told me I was too much and at society for forcing me to be a “man.” What was just a small fire has turned into an inferno.

The one person who understood all of this about me, who let me have my fits of rage, with patience, sympathy and grace, is gone. I am once again left to handle all of my feelings alone, or in blog posts, because I will always fear isolating myself with my feelings.

Merry Christmas.

December 11, 2024

Family Weekend

It’s been a busy month. So much and so little has happened that I’m a little overwhelmed on how to write it all out. Which is another reason why I’ve avoided writing. That and the fact that I have lost any and all interest in the things I once enjoyed.

The other night as I lay in bed, forcing my brain to shut the fuck up so I can sleep, it occurred to me that the things I once enjoyed doing (writing and performing) have gone away. Now I look at things like narrative arcs or turning myself into a character for the stage/screen with confusion and fear. I imagine that it’s just grief. Or, most likely, depression. In the past I used these things as outlets and now I could not even be bothered. I’d rather just sit. Looking at the TV or my phone has become my favorite past time. And I genuinely hate it.

The only way to get back to doing the things I love is to do them. It’s really quite simple. And if it turns out that I genuinely don’t enjoy these activities anymore, then so be it. Life is always changing. For the good and the bad.

This past weekend my whole family (my in-laws, brother hubs, and bf) all went to Vegas to celebrate my husband’s birthday. It’s the first one without him, since he came into my life. I wanted to mark it with something notable. When the BF was offered a comped suite at the Rio, we booked it for this weekend. All 8 of us filled the room for three days, and it was wonderful. On my husband’s actual birthday, we went to a drag brunch, my family got to experience Omega Mart at Meow Wolf, and then in the evening we ate an amazing dinner at a high dollar restaurant. If my husband had been there, I think he would have enjoyed it too. And maybe he did…

The first morning in Vegas my brother hubs and I got some very bizarre news. We are distantly related by blood. We both had suspicions when his aunt told us, during our first and only visit to her place in Texas, that there were some “Hensley’s” in their family tree. I was taken aback because my surname is very unique and if you encounter one in the wild, there is a 80% chance I am related to them. Every generation preceding me had 6-12 kids a each. Legitimately. I am one of the few branches to only have a single child.

When Ancestry had a special on the DNA kit I bought one for the brother-hubs because I HAD to know. Plus it would make for a serendipitous coincidence.

The only part I don’t quite understand is that when I search for him, nothing comes up. HOWEVER, when I search for his aunt our DNA matches are either: half third cousin 1x removed OR third cousins 2x removed. So, it stands to reason that since she shows up for him, in his matches, then he should for me. The only caveat is that his aunt’s father is different than his mother’s, however the Hensley name is from his maternal grandmother… Maybe it just hasn’t updated yet?

The one person I want to tell all of this to is my husband. I know he’d be excited about it, and probably make the same joke our friend Kyrus made “evidently I have a type. Hensleys.”

April 19, 2024

One Week…

It’s been a week since my husband passed and it still doesn’t feel real. I act as if he is just in the other room or on some trip. Any moment he’ll be back or I’ll get a text from him and everything will be just as it has been these past 3 years.

Something I have discovered about myself is my “reaction to grief.” In writing I can be as vulnerable as I want to be because it’s a blank page or an audience that may or may not be there. I don’t have to worry about whether I sound too calm or too sad and I never risk making someone uncomfortable. Which is something I can’t do in person. When I’m around other people I put my feelings into a steel vault buried deep, deep within my chest. Only under the influence am I able to spin the dial and let them out for others to see in real time. Otherwise, without these explicit parameters can I share how I truly feel.

This past week I have been constantly around someone. Hardly do I get a moment to myself. Which is by design and is not a complaint, by the way. At the surface I’ve done it because I know that Charlie would have wanted me to be there for Tony, his mom, sister, and niece. Especially his mom. So I honor him by doing that, at my own “detriment.” I hide everything I’m feeling to be strong for those around me. Below this truth, lies the pernicious reality that I don’t want to face my emotions. I would rather pretend I’m strong. The unfortunate part is once they’re buried I neglect to ever pull them out again, and they grow into a thorny, viny weed to choke my joy. The one who would do everything to pull them out of me is the one I grieve for in his absence.

This grief is so complicated even without me hiding it.

The other day my mother-in-law asked me if I was “relieved.” This is a part of the entire process that I have tried so hard not to recognize because the very notion fills me with insurmountable guilt… I am.

I’m relieved that he isn’t suffering, that wherever he is he gets to begin again; and I am for myself. The 24 hour requirement for caring is done. No longer will I get requests to move his hands, give him a drink, help him use the bathroom, bathe him, give him his pills, or move him from one room to the next with all the accessories that follow suit. I can finally sit down and just exist without worrying that I will be asked to do something else. And that is where I feel like the biggest piece of shit. How can/could I feel that way when the person I love is gone?

Now I am left attempting to process everything with all of my bizarre idiosyncrasies, the character flaws I’ve developed to cope with the stresses of my life. I’m in therapy but again when I’m talking to someone I am “indifferent.” I reveal nothing because that would be showing weakness. If they knew how I truly felt they would think of me as a burden, or worse they would use my secrets to betray me. (Wow I sound psychotic.)

The other night I fell deep into familiar destructive habits. It was the same shit I did before I ever met my husband, when (then too) I was not facing my trauma. I made some very bad, deadly choices that in the clarity of sobriety I knew my husband would be utterly upset with me. I could hear him in my head, as loud as if he was standing in front of me, that I need to stop doing these things before they get out of control.

For once in our nearly 21 years together I listened with absolute determination.

January 26, 2024

A New Member of the “Lollipop” Guild

I entered into the Midnight Madness short story competition and have had a week to concoct a short story. Have I started? Not really, other than planning and plotting in my head. So, I’m finally sitting down to bang out a rough draft. In the past I have done it day of the deadline so at least this is some progress. However, to get the engine purring before I dive in, I thought I would write a blog. It feels like so much and nothing at all has happened.

My husband has definitely progressed. But I think it’s a subtle change that isn’t as obvious to it’s broader implications. For some reason he has become OBSESSED with his mouth. He has explained to us that it feels like he has a tapeworm that is trying to escape through his mouth. Like this parasite is reaching up through his esophagus to escape. We called the hospice nurse and she assured him that “that” isn’t possible. (However I was told a story from my grandmother that her mother had a tape worm and after a bite of horse radish it crawled out… but I guess that was a ‘tall tale.’)

The nurse’s suggestion was to provide us with these little “lollipop” sponges to moisten his mouth and try to break up that dried phlegm at the back of his throat. Now every 20 minutes I’m dipping in these little sponges and swabbing his gums and tongue. This isn’t that much of an ask, except for me it comes with past trauma and lots of emotional baggage.

When my mom had lost the ability to swallow and was heading toward her end, the hospice nurse provided these exact “lollipop sponges” to moisten her mouth and lips. Seeing these again has brought up the feelings attached to them. I shared my feelings with him and he assured me that they are unrelated. This is not a sign of things to come. At least not in the immediate future. Yet… aren’t they?

With ALS he will eventually lose the ability to speak, breathe and swallow on his own. It’s just a natural progression of the disease. The muscles involved in these bodily functions atrophy and he is left kept alive by machines. He has already shared that he doesn’t want that, and I do not blame him. Neither would I. So… we have entered into a new waiting game, in my mind, of whether this is a sign of that or not.

I hate all of this. I hate this for me and for him. He feels so much guilt for how much he is relying on and asking of Tony and I. And I feel bad because in the face of this new task I am overwhelmed with it’s overall meaning. So I respond by being short and cold when he asks. It appears that I’m angry at him for making the requests, when in fact I’m mad that this is happening and don’t properly know how to process this change.

It’s further made worse because I generally don’t know how to process my feelings. I never learned healthy coping mechanisms or how to unpack my feelings in a way that I could handle them without flying off the handle. My go to response for most things is anger/rage. I think it makes me appear “tough.” Yet that couldn’t be further from the truth.