No surprises

I usually enjoy surprises, but little that is happening surprises me.

Janice refuses to talk while acknowledging the problem is a lack of communication. When something happens because of her lack of communication, she demands that she is not responsible in any way. Thank God we sometimes have an audience that can see how she misinterprets damn well everything.

This morning I looked over to see what she was doing online. I wanted to talk with her but didn’t want to interrupt her. She was writing about how horrible I am. While sipping the coffee I had made for her.

I said “when you’re done I would like to talk.” She started flipping out about her not being able to do anything. Putting away her phone and turning off the TV. I said “what are you doing? I just wanted to know if we could talk later, I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

She insisted we talk then so I did. I said I thought we had had a good week, the only time anyone had raised their voice it had been her, we visited a friend together and cooked outside. Everything she wanted to do we did, everything she didn’t want we avoided. I didn’t understand why she was still seeing me as a monster.

After she finished yelling at me for looking over her shoulder (how else was I supposed to know if she was busy) although we both do all day, she said “then I’ll just leave” and got up to gather herself, with the confidence of someone who had a destination. I said some things about how she was indicating she had already made up her mind, and it hurt because she could bare her soul to FaceBook, but she wrote these things in a group of friends in which I am not included. She couldn’t tell me how she feels but she tells other people. I really think that means she has made up her mind, or is in a position where she thinks she hasn’t but can’t let go of her ideas that have proven to be untrue. Which will leave her no other option.

Earlier in the week she had told me that she trusts me, but not on FaceBook. Does this sound like something a fifty three year old woman would say? She spends all this time sharing her feelings, the thing I had asked for, but she refuses to let me see them.

She wonders why I think she has already decided. That is what makes her mad, that I think she’s already decided. She got back under the covers, I took a shower. After I was dressed I went to the bed to pick up some things. She woke, complaining about the silence. She was pissed off because I hadn’t bothered her.

I understand parts but not all of her paranoia. Some have at least roots in reality, others are patently insane.

She thinks if I know she’s leaving I will treat her differently. She wants me to believe she hasn’t decided, but after a week of going beyond her wishes she is still telling people horrible things about me. So I’ve made zero impression. She hasn’t even calmed down enough to just disparage me for real life instead of her overwhelming fear of the bogeyman she has created in her mind.

The irony is I would treat her differently. I would have more respect for her. Right now she is hiding her feelings from me, essentially lying to me. It’s just unpleasant to watch, her desperately trying to hide her thoughts while her actions display her intentions to everyone in Technicolor.

It is who she is. The borderline personality. I can understand that part of the why, how a universe in black and white makes a grey person the enemy on odd number cycles. I hate to give up because I believe she’ll flip back. She will most likely flip back and forth for the remainder of her life, I would hate to miss the times that are good.

Even though, when she flips back she won’t remember any of the things she did, so they can’t be help against her. I’ll know, and maybe next time be better prepared, but I can never bring it up.

The trick is surviving the times like this. She is so unhappy and uncomfortable and there is nothing I can do. Even if she was a stranger I would hate to see this happen to someone, routinely alienating her friends, feeling persecuted from all sides. In the old days, before the turn of the century (I’ve been looking forward to saying that), she would talk to her psychiatrist, but psychiatrists don’t talk to patients anymore. And psychologists can’t do anything if they don’t see you.

Coming off two years of various levels of quarantine, with the additional stress of a pandemic and a political rebellion, there are folks who are a bit messed up. So many that we can find no one who is accepting new patients, not at any hospital in the greater Philadelphia are. We’re not alone dealing with that. I suspect that there are a few other people living through scenarios much like mine. I always suspected that a surprising number of people were depressed, now I am seeing its affects. There are not enough psychologists to go around.

People say they fear judgment, but what they fear is being judged negatively, something they might have to be responsible for. Janice is one of those people, constantly on the defense, jumpy. I am not. I am responsible for me, not for what you think of me. This gives me a calmer perspective. When that great judgement in the sky eventually happens, I am confident. If I’m wrong there is nothing I can do about it.

I have found that people who fear judgement are often the most judgemental. It is routinely frustrating. There is no discussion; they know how things are because once they were once that way. They do not accept that changes happen over time, they know it so it is eternal.

I do believe that there is the possibility we will survive this, and I know that the factors which decide that are completely out of my control. She spends all this time online telling people how horrible I am for not letting her be online and fails to see the conflict. I can only hope this doesn’t last long.

Yes Dear

That’s right, this is going to be a journal of masochism for a while. I do have a serious article in mind but don’t know how to fit it in

Janice tends to overstate her points, sometimes going on as long as five minutes on a concept I grasped in the first thirty seconds. Simply responding usually satisfies her, she doesn’t really care how I feel about it. It is something of a challenge to see how many times I can say “yes dear” before she notices.

She has always exceeded in making something out of nothing. It has just been manifested in different ways. I’ve had to warn guys about it, when I met her there was a rumor about her breaking up relationships. She makes it look like something is there when it isn’t, and doesn’t understand what the wife’s problem is. She has a platonic friend she’s known most of her life, I’ve met him, we talk. She makes the idea that they were platonic sound ridiculous, with her tales of unknown destinations or locations when waking together. There was nothing there, and when she makes it sound like there was, you’re wrong for ever thinking there might have been. It’s the tease, playing with your response.

I hear it in her stories, the comfortable stories of other lovers. Everyone has a past, but I don’t need a graphic description of every move. “And then we fucked” is on the edge of too much, anything more is. It does nothing to enhance my desire, and is a bit of a wet blanket when we’re in bed.

There is what happened in 1986. She shares certain parts with certain people, always saying “you don’t know the whole story.” That stands on its own, a horrific period no matter how little you know. I cannot fault her, but I wish she would give one entire story, recorded somehow, so she never had to tell the story again.

This night out with her friend which turned into a night over with her friend is a spectacular example. Spectacular because it is unique, Janice has never spent a night away from me. We are in the midst of wrestling with our relationship, this is about as bad timing as could be planned. We had plans, which she has incorporated by changing the day and including a person who is actively shunning me. Nature is even against her, our planned night Friday will be pleasant, Saturday we have oppressive heat, at its worst when her gathering is planned. Somehow, that will be my fault.

If for some reason they now cancel, that will be my fault. She could say “but you were mad” and what am I supposed to say? I’m mad at the drama, if she wants to cling to it and say I’m mad at her there is nothing I can do. I’m not mad at her, she is not the drama. I have done nothing to interfere with her plans, and have displayed much less disappointment in her characterization of me than I could.

Not the best timing but I like this friend. She’s been here before. But the hotel has to have whirlpools. Okay. Everything in their price range is also available hourly, but make no assumptions based on that. Make no assumptions based on anything. Everything is a secret, I hear her voice when she calls “Are you alone?” At six o’clock in the morning she’s asking if Janice is alone. What does she think is going on here? I hear her say “I have to get back to bed” as if Janice has woken her. Janice says “she had to go back to work,” despite the fact I just heard her say she’s ging to bed. At 6AM. Then her friend is going to pick her up from the lobby, she’s afraid to enter the condo where we sat next to each other years before. I’m supposed to be cordial the next night when we go to the Greek Festival together. Big smile, bury your feelings.

There is nothing there! But she builds it up with secrets and fake answers, making a big enough deal about it that it stands out she is making a big deal. No one needs this drama. Emma would switch moods in a second, but she never kept a running theme. Each incident was unique. Janice has decided that I am a monster, but not so vile she can’t sleep with me every night. How can she react to anything from me other than in horror? Yes, that’s how bad she thinks I am. I’ve watched her start shaking, her voice climbing in tone and volume. I’m scared. But there’s nothing there.

But who knows. This could be fueled by hormones. This could be fueled by a thousand things which are out of my control. I know that she’s having a hard time, and I want to help. I hope that help doesn’t mean leaving. I don’t believe it would be a solution, the monster lives in her imagination and will follow her wherever she goes. Buyt no one knows, her impressions a mixture of self induced fear and uneven medication, gently tossed with her questionable memory.

I’m still willing to admit misinterpretation, but even talking about it is aggressive. “You believed what?” I never met anyone in my life so disturbed by talking. I get arguments when I agree with her. Her responses are always snide, the anger of talking with an underling fully exposed.

And yet, and I wasn’t sure where to put this part, I love her. I have never felt this way about another human being. I don’t know what it is. She does these things and I don’t talk about it because she doesn’t talk. Then it turns out that by not talking she built an unhealthy relationship. This isn’t something I can just walk away from, I have far too much invested, no way to change that now. Nothing with which to rebuild.

The very most frustrating part is that I am usually right. This will end, hearts will be broken, irreversible decisions will be made, more hearts will be broken. It won’t matter whose fault it was.

This is my only outlet

I’m sure in the grand scheme of things this is possibly the most boring series of articles in the universe. Sorry, this is therapy.

I need someplace to say the things that Janice doesn’t hear. I say them over and over to her, but she hears something else. I do not want her to be the one who describes what I’m going through.

Yeah, me. The relationship was, as I thought, unsalvageable. Janice had too many false ideas that could not be reasoned with. She is in an irrational panic because of these false thoughts. I am dying inside because of her panic. She doesn’t trust me, but she believes what she thinks I said.

When my oldest daughter was young, she pronounced the word “Ketchup” as “Kibbige.” We could take her through the syllables, but the word remained kibbige. Me”catch” Devon “catch” me “up” Devon “up” me “ketchup” Devon “kibbige”

That’s an approximation of7 communication with Janice. She isn’t stupid, she can see the examples I set out, but she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to believe I’m not consciously trying to hurt her with every word or action. There’s no way to overcome that.

A friend once asked me “Does it ever bother you?” And I said “Does what bother me?” And he said “Always being right.” At the time, I said it only bothers other people, but right now it bothers me. Like the feeling you get when you sneak into her email and find a love letter to someone else, you really didn’t want that knowledge.

We argue about what we’re arguing about. It’s insane. I say three words, she finishes the sentence in her head and starts arguing. Whatever I was trying to say gets lost. The only way to avoid it is silence. Which of course is what got us here.

I don’t dare say anything about her being online today, after she said her goodbyes less than 24 hours ago. When she cried to me about leaving social media I said “why should we be sad, you’ll be back tomorrow.”

My mistake. She’s not online. She’s just reading posts and sending messages. She didn’t post anything. Did you just put a gun to your head? This is why I don’t mind ending my life. She has convinced me that words mean whatever she wants them to mean.

She creates end of the world problems from nothing, any attempt to remind her it’s nothing is seen as an argument worthy of a fight to the death. And because you said it’s nothing, you’re the one arguing, not her. Just like the varying definitions of “on social media,” her accusations and retorts are not arguing. She’s just responding.

And then nothing is wrong, the sun is shining, we’re going to the Greek Festival this weekend. She’s making plans for Juneteenth, and Pride, planning transportation and parking. She’s talking of running into people she knows, and I’m supposed to forget that she has told everyone she knows that I’m a monster.

Schizophrenia is contagious. Following her cycles has my head spinning in a universe built by Schroedinger. I’m getting jumpy at times, never knowing what to expect in the next second. And trying to act like nothing is wrong.

There is tomorrow. What will she be? This is so very much like how things were with Emma before we moved to Philly. She’d be in one mood on the phone as I got off the train, and by the time I got home she had flipped. We thought it was hormones back then, maybe the fact Janice is chasing menopause has something to do with all this. I do have my moments of hope.

Then theres the ironic hope, the picture of her finally realizing reality, and that I am gone, not what I want to happen but what I think will. And time ticks by as I wait to find out. I hope this isn’t the one where that happens.

Sorry for any Confusion

There’s a lot of ranting in this one too

I wrote a blog entry the other day, you might have seen it. I listed a number of times and ways Janice has abused my trust. She demanded that I remove it because she felt threatened. I have never censored my work for any reason, but I did for her.

Nothing has changed, I don’t know if anything ever will. After kicking me out of the Upper Darby Pride project, she needs an hour or two as they ramp up to the festival a couple of times a week. It irritates me. She doesn’t want me on the project but she expects me to facilitate her activity. That and the fact she giggles when talking to them.

Her flirting has rarely annoyed me. I understand it is part of her persona, and the persona she is building as The Stunning Janice, Rock Star. It’s when she is flirting while doing something she didn’t want me around that I get that burning sensation.

She will say that I don’t want her to do anything, yet we do things all the time. She doesn’t want to do anything with me. Every layer of this I look at fails to make me question my need for her. I saw the beautiful woman she can be, I want that woman in my life.

So she left the project that she kicked me out of, and it’s my fault. I see how she twists it now. I believe that on some level she is terrified, in an irrational state of panic. If you frame everything with that, it makes sense.

What doesn’t make sense is how you would never know, she shows no outward signs.

The solutions are obvious, the path of least resistance is to go our separate ways. I accept that, and the consequences. It would be ever so miraculous if she could suddenly see clearly, but that does not appear to be in the cards.

So you may find this depressing but I find it to simply “be,” there is nothing I can do about any of this. Any type of “read” or impression of where it’s going can only extend to the moment, talking about what led us here is “rehashing the past.” If I ask anything I am rushing her, her panic is to the point that mentioning something we were going to do later is interpreted as a command to do it immediately.

Any therapy or counseling is impossible, because no one is taking new patients (I think that says a lot about the state of mental health in the community). Not that I fully believe it would be of help. She has already characterized my desire to see a counselor as “an opportunity to prove her wrong.” Just like everyone she can’t see how her combative approach prevents self examination.

I don’t think I’d mind too much if a counselor told us that I was delusional and all of the things Janice assumes about me are true, and that my anger has turned the responsibility to Janice, exactly the way I think she has. Because assigning blame is not a part of therapy, learning and moving past it is.

Another of her “longtime friends” spurned her today. She had an old friend who just couldn’t be friends with her if she lives with me. Maybe she noticed Janice has once again unblocked me. I must have “liked” something to alert her to my presence.

If I tell her I don’t like her friends I’m controlling her, but if her friends tell her who she can live with, they’re not. If her friends can’t “support” her while she complains about how terrible I am, it’s my fault. Everything is my fault.

Now she says we can’t go anywhere anytime, because she’ll be humiliated. She is concerned about her judgemental friends, they might see us together. You know, there has been a dark ages feel to all of this, she feels “shunned.”

She feels. She thinks. She says. Within her reality she’s right. She’s always right. Why would she venture into the real world?

In her “humiliation,” she went through another social media withdrawal, saying she was “choking on the ashes of burnt bridges.” She cannot understand you’re supposed to cross the bridge before you burn it. Angrier than ever that I “made her leave her friends” she is not speaking. Not quite the punishment she had imagined.

I feel so bad for her sometimes, she beats herself up then blames me for the bruises. I wish there was a way to go our ways now, she could find whether the source of her pain is me or something else.

I can ride it out, or. . . ? There is no second choice, and I know what will happen if she leaves. I’m not precisely sure what this mindset is called, probably seen as negative, waiting for the inevitable end, unable to change anything about it. Largely I’m at peace, occasionally exasperated, but I’m not even supposed to be alive, this is just the dried up remains of the gravy, the adventures after Emma.

Now her friend is going to visit, she will be staying at a hotel up the street and will pick Janice up. Forget that we had plans, her friends can’t even come to our home. I’m not supposed to be insulted by this or anything. Maybe she’ll be back in time on Friday to go to the Greek Festival across the street with me. Or maybe she’ll go with her friend before she comes home. How am I supposed to interact with this “friend”? “I’m sorry I’m so frightening that you couldn’t step in our house, see ya next time!”

Things are happening too fast for something that was supposed to be months from now. This is turning into a blow by blow as it happens

You may see this deleted if she reacts to it the way she did the last blog. It just can’t go unsaid, I feel the need to give explanations, even when they are forbidden for me.

What’s in YOUR uterus?

For some reason people believe that your privacy belongs to them. The recent law in Texas requires menstruation police, keeping track of everyone’s period. Miss a period and produce a baby or go to jail. Other countries do this, but we consider them uncivilized or police states. I rarely kept track of my spouse’s periods, but in Texas each individual is charged with tracking their neighbor’s fertility. Thanks legislature, everyone wanted that job.

Fear of prosecution has ended abortions in Texas. At least that’s what anti-abortionists thought. In reality, there are still coat hangers in Texas. Women will die from botched abortions, women will travel to other states, and some women will be forced to raise children they do not want. Making abortion illegal does not bring it to an end, as an example the “War on Drugs” was lost by the government. Several states have legalized recreational marijuana while men rot in jail for having a few seeds in the car. Marijuana is dispensed through medical doctors, writing prescriptions for a schedule one drug. Oregon has decriminalized hard drugs, referring users to treatment instead of jail.

But abortion, a medical procedure, is understood by the public even less than marijuana. I have an unusual insight, my partner’s mother devoted years to ending safe abortions and is actually the person responsible for the lie that abortion can cause cancer. I even fell for that one once.

The overwhelming percentage of abortions are not surgical, but those are the pictures the anti-abortionists enlarge into posters. Late term abortions are only performed when either the parent’s life is threatened, or the life of the offspring is questionable.

Most anti-abortion laws restrict abortion after the embryo develops a pulse, usually called a heart beat even though the heart has not been created yet. This happens around six weeks, when most women are discovering that they really are pregnant. I have had partners miss periods without being pregnant, but now if you’re a day late you have to have plans. If you wait to miss two its too late.

Right now it appears that the Supreme Court is about to overrule Roe v Wade. Should that take place about twenty states have in place laws that go into effect if Roe falls. so let’s back up a minute.

Abortion is not “favored” by anyone. It is a necessary evil. Although I actually knew a woman who considered it last line birth control, that view is unique. “Pro-abortion” just means that you want the choice available. But let’s look at some numbers.

Between fifty and seventy percent of Americans are in favor of legal abortions, depending on the polling service . Since this is a democracy the first question is why is there legislation that is contrary to the desires of the majority?

One in four women will have an abortion before they turn forty five. Abortion is not some rare practice that only takes place somewhere else. If your friends haven’t told you about their experience, it might be because they don’t trust you with the information. Women are shamed for using a legal medical procedure.

Deaths due to legal abortions are rare, many years having a total of one or two. On the other hand, deaths from illegal abortions are far more common. As illegal abortions often take place in underdeveloped countries we can only estimate what the effect would be in America. A twenty one percent increase doesn’t sound like much when your base was two, we have advanced medical facilities to save people who would otherwise die. In underdeveloped countries, where abortion is either illegal or unobtainable, two hundred and twenty women die for every one hundred thousand abortions, with a world wide total of twenty two thousand eight hundred deaths from unsafe abortions every year.

And now the United States of America can take its place among underdevoped countries.

There is clearly a majority of uninformed lawmakers. We can see this with most social legislation, senior U.S. Senators have expressed a lack of knowledge about marijuana other than the film Reefer Madness which was made in 1936. It’s a schedule one drug so it must be dangerous if you haven’t been exposed to the reality that no one, ever, has overdosed on marijuana. And “everyone knows” that abortion causes cancer, unless they have read one peer reviewed article.

So this weekend, my partner and I will travel to the state capitol, Harrisburg, to take part in a protest demanding pregnant people in Pennsylvania have the choice of whether or not to abort. We will be joining busloads from around the state, and probably end up on some newscast. People will talk about it for a while, but not for long. No one really likes to talk about abortion, they would rather it be invisible. I don’t talk much about some of the less pleasant things I have done, but I am not ashamed of them. Don’t confuse silence with shame.

In the eighties, when AIDS was blossoming, there was a saying, “Silence equals Death.” It is still true. Speak up, talk about your beliefs with folks who don’t agree. America is falling apart because not enough people talk, assumptions are made. Let your legislators see that they are out of touch, because they are the ones who need to pass laws protecting those seeking abortion.

I will never need an abortion, but I have and will know people that do. I don’t want to let them down with “It didn’t affect me so I didn’t do anything.”