Personal Journal

I need some help

I need some help. I need someone to talk to, and I can't afford a therapist.

I'm losing something of my self, and I'm feeling desperation about that.

It's resolution time. It's time to be committed about things, because a lot of the progress that I had made seems to have escaped. I've slid back more toward a person that I do not want to be rather than being the person I know I can be.

Jean's illness is a big cross to bear, obviously more for her than for me. And it interferes with all of the things that I want to do to make myself into that person I wish to be, I need to be, to better respect myself.

It takes so much of my time and energy to make myself available for meeting her needs. I don't resent her for it, not at all. I just miss having time for me. Even in quiet time now, I'm worrying that I'm not being there for her.

I don't know if she's started a downhill slide yet, but I do think that the progress we saw over the summer has ended.

I don't know how to manage it anymore. I'm in so much of the same position I was in with my wife when I wanted a divorce - recognizing something unpleasant and not having the courage to speak of it openly.

Only this time, it's not about love, it's about death. Before, I knew I didn't love my wife, and I didn't know how to present that information. Things got along SO well for me when I got that problem solved.

This time, it's that I know Jean is going to die of this cancer. Well, perhaps I dont' "know" it, but given the statistics, I have no reason to believe otherwise unless she's a miracle case, and I haven't seen evidence of that so far.

Jean hasn't accepted that, and I don't blame her for that. I don't think she should accept it, actually. Even though I know I would if it were me with the cancer - that's just who I am.

Lately, we've spent a lot of time going over where she's at with the fight. Is she still winning, or is she losing.

I'm very hurt inside because I don't have the capability to make much me-space in my life. That's not Jean's fault, that's not what I'm trying to say. I'm saying that something is slipping away from me, and I know I'm going to miss it. But the truth is that caring for Jean is the most important thing right now.

It can be satisfying, when I see her happy or content. It can be satisfying when I see her recognize that she can depend on me infinitely, to always support and put her first.

I tell myself that those other things that I miss I will have again someday. And maybe this is part of the problem: I see me having those things again knowing that they will happen in the aftermath of Jean's passing.

And I am mad at myself because I feel like I am giving myself reason to look forward to her being gone...

I envision her being gone the way I envisioned being married. Absent of the ability to feel the emotions in the visions.

I think in the last two months, it's started to pierce my wall, how ugly Jean's deterioration will be if it happens. Her brain is going to be destroyed, and slowly or quickly, every function that it controls is going to deteriorate, and it is going to be HORRIFIC. It makes me nauseaus just to think about.

And so I don't think about it. There's a cutoff space where denial kicks in. It's right about there in the previous paragraph. Keep hoping that deterioration is never going to set in, and do NOT think about what will happen when it does.

And so I'm feeling guilty at myself for still wanting something that I could have had in our pre-cancer world, and imagining myself having it in a post-cancer world... But a post-cancer world cannot happen without a post-Jean world, and thinking that I want a post Jean world really makes me ashamed of myself.