I think I can safely say, with no false modesty, that I am a freaking WORLD CHAMP of positive attitude. Here I have a literal cancer* running my life, destroying my health and complicating my marriage, and I am almost always the one telling everyone else around me to, “cheer up, I get to knit all day, Whee!”
*endo is a cancer in the mutated cells sense, not in the malignant metastasizing sense. So it falls in the category but it won’t kill me, no matter how much I hope for it. Besides, it sounds gloomier, and today that’s what I’m after.
Today I have run smack into the wall of crappy outlook and I think I’ll stay here slumped at the bottom in my little self-pity puddle for a while.
It was probably the diarrhea that set me off. After weeks of constipation so bad my bum would bleed every few hours, today the pendulum swung to the other side as I gripped my guts as hard as I could, just trying to keep them from exploding through my belly button. My abdomen is ugly enough with the bloating and the stretch marks from my last laparoscopy and the burn marks from living with a heating pad clamped to my middle 24/7, I could really do without the fingernail claw marks, thanks.
As uncomfortable as all that is, my real problem lately has been with Bear. We’ve had a couple discussions lately that have not been at all pleasant for me, but he needed somewhere to go with all the garbage this disease forces on him. In accordance with my Pollyanna attitude, I tried to draw him out, to be the big brave person so he could vent all of his feelings about what he has to deal with. Turns out I overestimated myself. Once I got him going there was no stopping him and it didn’t take long before I was begging him to talk to our Bishop instead of me so I wouldn’t have to hear about how I was making his life suck.
I completely get that this disease affects him too, that’s why I started the conversation in the first place. He has to work a full day and then come home and do everything for me, including change my clothes and occasionally bathe me. All the while he has no real evidence that there’s anything truly wrong with me, he just has to take my word for it when I say, “Bear, be a dear and bring me more pills, would you?” Or, “Oh, I can’t do the dishes, oh ow, the pain. Bring me a cold drink?” If I were in his shoes I couldn’t help but wonder if my wife was milking it.
Not to mention the lack of sex. Oh don’t even get me started on that.
Yesterday he had a really rough day at work, but not half as rough as some he’s had, just a run of the mill bad day. Then he went to the bank and discovered we are OUT of money until the 25th. And we haven’t gone grocery shopping in weeks. He came home so sour and depressed, I couldn’t do anything to help him. I ran to the kitchen and ransacked the shelves and came up with a menu to get us through the week (it consisted of peanut butter saltine cracker sandwiches, but we wouldn’t have starved), I came home early from Young Women’s, we watched all his shows together, nothing helped. And if Sydney Bristow kicking bad guys butts in a tiny dress won’t cheer him up….we’re in some serious trouble here.
Finally I grabbed his face and said, “Dude, I need you to let it go. We’ve got bigger problems than money.” Even that wouldn’t penetrate his depression shell, until I started crying because I was so severely positivity dehydrated I couldn’t come up with one more word.
I think the best lesson we’ve learned as a couple through our soon to be 6 years of infertility, family troubles, unemployment, moves, chronic health problems, operations, career changes, etc. is the good mood give and take. Bear had been depressed all day and when he saw me crack, he recognized that his turn was over and now it was my turn to be attended to.
Once he gets home we’re going to try to see Star Wars. Although in Modesto, CA, home of George Lucas, the theaters are freaking INSANE. Maybe I’ll drown my sorrow in light saber battles, maybe they’ll be sold out and I’ll have one more guest to my pity party.