Sunday 22 January 2012

Lonely

Yesterday I just felt so lonely.  Walrus spent the whole day napping in my bed and I crawled in beside him and he didn't even stir he was sleeping so deeply.  I lay there looking at his back and thinking about things.
I need to talk to him about the drinking.  I can't handle it.  Getting drunk twice weekly isn't really a quality I want in a life partner.  Not that I feel that way about him... I don't think I'm in love.  If we separated, I would miss the cuddling and the feeling of having someone, but I don't feel I know him or that we've connected deeply or anything.  That's sad.  Maybe it's not fair to him.  Right now I think I'm helping him.
He didn't drink this week so I'm pretending the issue isn't as big as it is.
One night he sent me a text out of the blue that said I deserved better than 'damaged goods', and I didn't need to be saddled with his stuff, and that he was just a bum...It went on and on like this.  I of course said I didn't feel like that, that I loved him, etc.
There is a small part of me that is throwing a little tantrum inside.  Why do I get this?  I waited 30 years.  This is the best I can do?  And I grieve the years that have gone by, the experiences I didn't have, all the loneliness and all the self-criticism... Am I going to be a wife and mother?  Now that it's a possibility it seems farther away than ever.
I shouldn't speak of him just as a burden.  He's a person struggling with some difficult stuff and behind the stroke is a person I really like.
I'm doing this internship right now; I'm only three weeks in.  I have a long commute so it's ten hour days and I'm adjusting to the schedule.   Right now I'm tired right out.  Walrus is missing me during the day so I go out of my way to see him in the evening and he stays over on the weekends.  I try and get a few chores done but I feel like I should always be exercising, drawing, working on stuff to move my life forward, and all I do is nap with him and watch TV.  I'm not really seeing my friends either...
Anyways.  I'm just very tired right now.


Sunday 8 January 2012

Bumps in the Road...Fork in the Road?

I've been finding faults with him all week.  I'm not sure I can handle this.

One night we went to the movies downtown and afterwards as the bus pulled up he said he wasn't ready to go home yet, kissed me and put me on a bus.  I said I didn't like the idea but that he was a grownup. That was at 10 pm.  He got home at 1pm that night.  I assumed he went to a pub.  I didn't really ask.
The next day we went to the library.  We ran into one of his friends who wanted to go to coffee, which turned into a beer, which turned into a pitcher of beer, which turned into a second pitcher... It was after 7pm, and I had my first day of internship the next day.  I was already tired and I wanted to get ready for my big day, so I kissed him and went home.  Around 10 that night he started texting me.  His friend had gone home to his family and Walrus was drinking alone watching the hockey game.  He apologized.  He said I was the Ron McLean to his Don Cherry (Any Canadians in the audience?)  and that he needed me to ground him, to tell him when he'd gone too far.  Then he said a lot of stuff about wanting to grow old with me...he used the phrase 'mother of my children'   I cried.  I couldn't respond with equal ardor...I couldn't believe someone was saying something like that to me, but it's so hard to be the nag, so hard to be the nurse...
It was nice to hear that he appreciated the nagging, in a way; he knew it was somehow good for him.

The next day he was too tired to go out and I didn't see him.  He slept most of the next day as well.  When I did pick him up he wasn't dressed and I helped him gather his things.  His jacket had a big splatter on it.  He said it was mud.  I handed him his scarf and it was all caked with something gross...I dropped it on the floor when I saw the stain.  I began to suspect -the coat and the scarf- I think he threw up on himself the night of the two pitchers of beer...I was so upset with this thought.  I wouldn't talk to him all the way to my house.  He knew something was wrong but didn't know what.  When we got to my house I took the jacket away and cleaned it.  It wasn't talked about.  Once the evidence was gone I put it out of my mind.

Today we had a family thing to go to in the afternoon.  Walrus had spent the night and we were getting ready to go, when he put on his coat, said he was going to a quick coffee run with his dad and went out the door.  His dad was sitting in his car outside.This was less than an hour before we were supposed to be at the family event!  I was so mad.  He said he'd get a ride from his dad if he was running late.  I waited a long time, couldn't get a hold of him, got annoyed, and left.  My mother commented that it was quite rude.  I was 25 minutes late for the family event; Walrus arrived there five minutes after I did.  On the way home I told him I was annoyed and he was completely surprised.  In the end there was very little harm done, I suppose, except for two cars went out when one would have sufficed.  He apologized, but I still nursed a little hurt.  I felt it was very rude not to tell me what he was planning, and to accept a last minute invite that undid all my plans.

Then tonight he poured himself a glass of my mother's wine, the very wine he had bought my mother for Christmas.  I felt that was very rude, and I'm so terrified he's drinking too much, that he can't stop himself when he starts... 

We talked about it in the car as I drove him home.  I explained that my mom's stuff was hers.  We eat her food already; her wine, her candy, and stuff like that are off limits.  (I didn't go into how rude I thought it was to drink her Christmas present...) Walrus said he understood that.    We talked a bit more about this week, how I've been upset with him so many times...I said I was scared of drinking.  I am- I hate the thought of not being in control of myself and hate to see my friends acting foolish and undignified.  He said, very shortly, that we were both grownups and that he's had a year of doctors telling him this and that and he was tired of it.
Mostly we just sat there in the car in silence.  We said we were both okay and kissed and said goodnight.  
We"ve just had a text conversation where he apologized for being testy.  He said he feels like he has to be strong all the time and meet all these expectations...Sometimes he falls down.  He thought he could make his own decisions and was kinda saying I should back off....
So much for the Ron McLean role.

It sounds great, but when he's tired or drunk he doesn't make good decisions, and sometimes I have to deal with the consequences of that.  I'm just reading about alcoholism right now.  

I'd say he meets at least four of these criteria, these past few weeks anyways. 
I am in over my head.


Tuesday 3 January 2012

Reflections

My New Year's Eve wasn't that fun.  Walrus got pretty sloshed and I was upset.  It was just the two of us at my house.  He made a lovely dinner for me.  I thought we would, you know, mess around a bit, but we just watched stupid TV and he made not-that-witty comments.  We didn't even play board games.  He got pretty silly and I, who never drink, hate seeing people lose control of themselves like that.  Also, he's supposed to have a two drink limit on account of all the medication he takes.
I should say that I had two drinks myself and at one point in the evening, before I realized how much vodka he'd had, we were laughing quite a lot and having a pretty good time.

I think part of me thought we were going to have a talk about what we wanted for the New Year.  I am still waiting for our long deep talk about anything.  It feels like we can't talk about the past, nor the future.  We're just endlessly stuck in the present.  First I have to make sure he's slept, showered, eaten, taken pills, etc, then maybe we can talk to each other, person to person.  (and not person to patient.)  Yes, I know sometimes I'm his nurse.  I don't think I realized how much I would assume that role when I first started dating him.  I knew it wasn't going to be easy, that's for sure.

I've been philosophizing about this whole experience lately, and I don't know if I can get all my thoughts together, but here's some of my musings.

I worry a lot that I'm just 'taking what I can get', that I never would have gone for someone with a stroke if it wasn't somehow 'safer' for me as a first relationship...I don't fear rejection, I can go slow with him...
I wonder what it would be like to have a 'normal' relationship.  It would be nice to have a boyfriend who could drive, or lift heavy objects... Quite often I wish I could change things about him, things that aren't stroke-related.
I don't talk much about the positive aspects of us being together.  I can't really represent him very well in these short posts.  I usually complain about him.  He is supportive, and thoughtful and affectionate.  He is quirky and intelligent and talented.  He's just got a lot of hurt to get through.  He's grieving who he used to be, before the stroke took so much from him.
I wonder if I'm so loved because I'm there, not because of who I am but because he can feel desirable to somebody again.

 Having someone to care about gives some kind of purpose to my life.  There's a song in the musical Oliver! where Nancy sings about her abusive, criminal boyfriend Bill Sykes "if someone needs you, you love them so."  That's cheesy, but I kinda feel in some way I've just accepted my role as caregiver and I'm busy doing it because it's what needs to be done.  I can help him.  I am useful and important and needed and loved.  This doesn't explain it very well.  I think we're both getting something out of being together.

I don't know if I'm in love.  I guess not.  I'm not sure how much I believe in romantic love.  If I could fall in love with anyone, shouldn't they be the most wonderful person in the world?  There are very few people in the world who are truly good and lovely and everything charming, and everybody would be in love with them.  If I think about love that way, why would anybody pick me and why would I pick anybody I know?  Everyone has their flaws.  If I think about love as two people agreeing to partner to face life together, to help each other, to live with each other's weaknesses....then it makes more sense.  It's still kind of crazy.  Of all the people in the world, what are the chances two people pick each other?  And the other weird thing is how quickly they enter into this partnership, and share each other's lives.  I mean, I wouldn't go find a new friend on the internet and make them my exclusive best friend after four outings together.  When you make friends with someone, it takes time to build trust and connection, but in a relationship the whole process gets fast-tracked.

I've been alone for so long that this partnership thing is really going to be foreign...Well, can I really say alone?  I've lived with my family, and now just my mother all my life.  I'm still part teenager in how I depend on her...
Sometimes I look at Walrus and I'm surprised that he looks like a man.  A grown man, who's traveled and worked and had relationships and has a hairy chest.  I think I felt like a teenager myself, in the romance department, and part of me expected someone equally youthful...  That's quite silly, but I don't feel thirty and sometimes it hits me what I've missed out on.

I do think a little bit about why it took me so long to get to this point.  Was there something wrong with me that made me unattractive, is there still?  What have I missed, what mistakes should I have already made?  Sometimes I think about it, but I'm actually quite busy being caught up in the new experience...I spend time thinking about what I should be doing, but not a lot about the past (or lack of a past!)

And the future....Do I stay with him for the long term?  Is that really my story?  Thirty-year old virgin meets stroke victim, helps him on his road to recovery and they stay together happily ever after?  No Hollywood script could be cheesier.
I don't think much about the future either.  My imagination seems to run out if I try to look further ahead than next April.  It's all foggy up ahead.  Just gotta get through internship, fix this health problem, support Walrus through therapy and a move to a new group home, get myself a job, move out....all in the next six months.  That's plenty to worry about.

Walrus and I recently saw 'Carnage', the new Polanski film.  It's about two couples fighting, sometimes couple against couple, sometimes husband against wife, sometimes men against women...It made me realize how hard it is to live with someone for a lifetime.  Marriage seems an impossible thing to ask of two people! I'm a bit sour on the whole institution.  (Walrus, I suspect, is the monogamous type and really wants to be married to someone.)  If you see the film, we're very much like Penelope and Michael.  (Jodie Foster and John C Reilly.)  Walrus told me he identified with the Michael character, and I thought the same thing throughout the movie.  And I'm quite righteous and a bit neurotic like Penelope, although I hope not quite that anal-retentive.  (Note: Michael has an venomous anti-marriage speech that Walrus's head might agree with, but not his heart.)

A few days later we watched 'Barney's Version' and I cried and cried when Barney and his third wife split up.  He really loved her, but that wasn't enough to fix things.  It's possible to really screw things up so that they can't be fixed.  Barney drank a bit too....I think I saw the end of our relationship in that scene-  Walrus would love me truly, but it's all the little things that would add up...He would be thoughtless, impulsive and have no idea how he'd hurt me, just like a little kid, just like Barney.  (In the movie, Barney is shown drinking at a pub with friends while his wife is making her debut as a radio announcer.)

Maybe it won't be like that.  Maybe I'll be the one to stray, or to be dumped.  But I've been bold enough to make the prediction that I will be the one to very sadly say love isn't good enough.

Poor Walrus.  He had no idea why the movie made me cry so much.


Monday 2 January 2012

TMI

Warning!  This post is going to talk about below-the-waist health stuff.  So if it's icky, don't say I didn't warn you.

At the age of 30, I finally had sex for the first time, and it hurt so badly we had to stop.  Two other attempts have also had similarly disappointing results.  It is so frustrating it's made me cry more than once.  My boyfriend is being very supportive.  He said it's not that big a deal.

I asked my best friend, who told me the problem was that I was just 'small' and needed to be 'stretched.'  I have never been able to wear tampons my whole life, so I believed her.  Turns out that's not quite accurate- the vagina changes shape as needed.  Babies come out of it, after all.
However, I found out about something called vaginismus and that sounds like what's happening to me.  The muscles are just tightening up at the entrance of the vagina.  It's a reflex, like being poked in the eye and flinching every time something comes near your face.  That creates a cycle- I expect pain and tense up and feel pain.  One website said I should be doing Kegel exercises and um...putting my finger up there, then two, then three.  Once I can get three fingers in, everything should be good to go.  I can only get two, after a few weeks of doing the exercises.  Last week I finally was able to use a tampon painlessly, and was ridiculously excited by this achievement, until for some reason my body rejected a smaller tampon the next day and I felt extreme pain.  One step forward, three steps back.

I also have polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). I think I feel shame about the whole 'waterworks' because mine have never quite worked properly.  I was already worried about not being about able to have children.  I never expected this!

Extremely frustrated, I got a book from the library called 'When Sex Hurts'.  I don't think it's that great a book, but it's better than nothing.  (Side note:  one book on female sexual health problems, a whole shelf on men's.)  It suggests physiotherapy as a solution.  I was so surprised!  I didn't think physio dealt with that small a muscle group, or that there would be any practitioners in my hometown.  I found the local physio association's website and there are quite a few who deal with the 'pelvic floor' and 'vaginal pain'.

The book also said that if your muscles are always tense it can cause you to feel like you have to urinate all the time, and that the bladder isn't emptying fully.  This is a problem I've had off and on through the years.  Right now it seems worse than ever.  I'm getting up several times in the night feeling like I need to pee, when I don't.  Maybe doing these exercises is making it worse instead of better!

So I've decided it's time to see a doctor, make sure I don't have a bladder infection or anything, and see if I can get referred to a physiotherapist.  I really don't want to talk about it, but I think I have to.  I'm starting an internship for school this week so I might use that as an excuse for putting this doctor visit off, but I really need to get this sorted soon.