(no subject)
I'm tired. I'm cranky. I can't concentrate on anything, and I have a new book that I desperately want to read. I keep sitting down here to write about it, and stopping. I don't want to write about it. I don't want to talk or think about it. I want it all to go away, to not be the biggest part of my life. I want to not feel guilty for not being strong enough not to cry about it.
It isn't his fault. I know he is having a harder time than I am, of course. I don't blame him. I knew when I married him that eventually we'd have to face this, and that we'd do it together.
I can't really put what I want into words right now. I want to vent. I want to let all of this out and still somehow fill the hollow place in my center. I want to reassure all of you out there who care, who are worried or even just curious that, yes, we will eventually be okay.
Most of all, I want my husband back. Sometimes he's here, and sometimes he just isn't. When he is here, he's the man - the boy, really - that I met five years ago. When he isn't, I'm alone with a shell. I can tell he's still in there, somewhere, but wherever it is, it just isn't close enough. Behind glassy eyes and under sagging shoulders, his self collapses. He wanders the house at night with his eyes closed. I find him outside, or on the kitchen floor, or asleep on the couch. I'm terrified that I will wake one morning and not find him.
And, yet, somehow, he is better, too. When he's lucid, we talk the way we used to. He misses his friends. He wants to create, and he glows with life. I worry that I can't keep up, that I won't be enough. I revel in the moments, repeating them over in my head to sear them into memory. We laugh until we cry. We forgive. We heal together.
The doctors can't seem to agree on what this is. I won't get into it here without his express permission, but I will say that the words they are using are not ones anyone wants to hear. Higher doses. Intense treatment. Side effects, therapy, and a partridge in a pear tree. One of the words, however, makes my heart sing: Outpatient. It means we get to keep our life "normal." It means he stays free, that I can be here to help and he can be at home to be helped. It may mean the worst is yet to come, but for now it just means I still have as much of him as I can.
This is hard, but we will be okay.