Tomorrow I have to take the husband for some kind of scan on his heart. It’s a PYP? He gets a dye injection at 11 and then we have to hang out somewhere for three fucking hours so they can scan him at 2. I might just bring him back to the house, even though the appointment is 20 miles away. Maybe I’ll make him wait in the car while I buy things that don’t require refrigeration at a big box store. When we went to the heart specialist last week the husband admitted to having a couple of episodes of chest pain…. WHICH HE NEGLECTED TO TELL ME ABOUT. Did I tell you this already? I’m feeling so stressed these days everything seems like a dream or a deja Vu.
Once, long before his whole failing health/dementia situation, back when we were living in stepford, he told me that 90% of a person’s life time health costs are typically acquired in their last year of life and that it wasn’t sustainable and that we need to, as a society, learn to say goodbye earlier. Hahahaha. I think about that from time to time. I wonder if deep down inside he actually does know how fragile he is and that any day could be his last, or maybe as some of my friends occasionally point out, he thinks he will live forever so he just might.
I think that from now on I’ll refer to my kids by their ages. It seems strange to me that they’re all in their 20’s right now. And by strange I mean it is actually blowing my mind. I’m having that boring existential crisis that I don’t want to admit to. I used to say “I want three solid good decades of me time when this over.” Now I’m willing to settle for one. I really want reassurance that when the sick/dying/dead spouse dust settles not only will I have the time to focus on myself but that I will also have the emotional energy to get myself there. I think often of Pal’s experiential advice to me. He tells me that once “it’s over” I’ll look back and see how hard it really was. He told me I’d look back and have no idea how I managed to make it through and I will marvel at how much energy I spent worrying. He said it’s not possible to have clarity when you’re in the thick of it. But Pal didn’t have to be a full time caretaker during a pandemic, so that might be a crucial difference in our experiences. Also, my husband is hanging on longer than Pal’s husband did.
I was thinking about how when 29 (how is it possible that I am the mother of a 29 year old?!?) was a baby I was so overwhelmed with the 24/7 of motherhood. I remember thinking a few weeks into motherhood that it felt like the longest babysitting job I had ever had and that I was still expecting someone to knock on the door and tell me that I wasn’t grown up enough to do this and they were taking the baby back. Of course I didn’t know at the time I had PPD and PTSD. That could be why every passing moment felt so surreal. Was I really living that life? I remember very clearly how it felt. I remember it the way you experience things when you’re underwater. The sounds are muffled and you can’t really focus your vision. I really did white it knuckle it though those first couple of years. And in retrospect I thank god for that second miscarriage because it righted my PPD in an instant. How did I live a life where everyone I knew completely failed me? How is it even possible that no one tried to get me help? Crazy. Do I just fake it on a professional level? I have no idea. I don’t know if anything could have been done to get me back into the real world any faster than it happened but to think that not a single person sat me down to address my depression blows my mind. How can it be possible that I was in such rough shape and not a single person (outside of that one friend who counseled me to go to a support group) stepped in to help. Jeez.
Sometimes I wonder if all the babies I lost are in the spirit world waiting for me to join them. The two second term miscarriages everyone knew about, Evan’s twin, and the miscarriage I don’t speak about. Four babies. That’s a lot.
I need to take a break from the photo coach. I just don’t like the feeling of pressure to perform breathing down my back. I’m not giving up. I just need to take a break. I need to go easy on myself for a little bit. Super easy. I’m the delicate flower now. Time to look out for myself.
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