Well, this is new.

I’ve been sick since march 14th, 2020. Covid. Although at the time, they weren’t testing anyone who wasn’t a movie star, athlete, military, medical or political figure. I was a classic case even with their ever changing symptoms list. Ever since then, I have had fatigue spikes. Basiclly, I’m exhausted 3 weeks, then get a week that reminds myself what human feels like. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

I am reluctant to talk to my partner about this because he believes if you have/had covid, you’re dead. If you’re not dead, you don’t/didn’t have covid. We’ll get back to this.

Seven days ago, I couldn’t breath. Went to hospital where they said, yo, lookit that, your white blood cell count is high, wonder what that could be? Well, off you go home, be sure to come back if you know, like, die. No covid test was done and I honestly have no fucking clue why.

Three days later, my nose starts running. Now, by that I mean not the sniffles, but when you look down it’s like turning on a faucet. Running. Get (or continue?) fatigue, the usual symptoms for me, yadda yadda, ad nauseum. As I said, I’m reluctant to bring it up with partner. But I do.

_{Me: I got a runny nose …
Him: you don’t have covid.
Me: I don’t have covid.}

And that was pretty much it. I noticed a couple of days later, my emotions were riding a little high. Higher than normal for me. I was getting angry. Like, really angry. And sad. Really sad. Nightmares about skinwalkers and trying to kill them. My hearing was super alert. Falling asleep is hard, but once sleeping it’s good – but fatigue still grinding me down. I’ve been sick for what, 7 months. I’m exhausted. And angry. I’m not being listened to, even the doctors don’t fucking care.

Then something happened that I wasn’t expecting. I stopped feeling my emotions. I could tell they were still there. I ‘felt’ the angry. But I didn’t feel it at all. ‘Oh, there’s a spoon on the counter’ gave me the same emotional punch as the anger. It feels blank. Distant. Muted? I can still tell there’s an emotion, but it doesn’t affect me. And I know what triggered this.

A few hours ago, partner comes up to me and starts telling me how the pains in his back are concerning him, cause he doesn’t know what it is, and what if he’s having a heart attack and can’t tell?

I just looked at him, nodding, emoting, you know how it goes. And in my head, I’m saying: Well, when I came to you asking about possible heart attacks, you’re response was: it’s a good way to die. It’s perfectly in my personality to have said it out loud. But I didn’t. The anger needed to say it wasn’t there. Well, it was there, but it was…blanketed. It was just – not sure how to put it. Pointless. The anger is pointless. The sadness is pointless. Fear is pointless, I can’t control anything – not the covid, not the doctor, not a sociopath partner who’s trying to kill me. It’s all just pointless.

Hammer Time.

The last time we used a tool was about six months ago and that was a screw driver. I can’t remember when we had need of a hammer. Years? Decades? I just realized today, I’ve seen a hammer in the bathroom for the last two weeks. Didn’t think anything of it. But…

Why is there a (really large, heavy duty) hammer in our bathroom, next to the toilet?

He’s never closed the door when on the throne (disability made it so people may need to get to him fast. Can’t have a closed or locked bathroom door.). And I just got into the habit. And the cat can’t use the handle, so we have the door open for her, too. We have wandered in and out, with one of us using the pot, it’s totally part of our natural routine. Even the cat thinks toilet breaks are actually social times and requests pets.

I ‘saw’ the hammer today and my mind went to a dark place.

Lockdowns have increased domestic abuse. I’m always on the look out now. I never expected my partner to use physical assalt (you can’t pretend to be innocent when your knuckle pattern is on her cheek) but he may be getting tired of my continuing existance.

I’m not getting very good sleep. I think I’ll ask about the hammer, see what he comes up with. Should be inventive!

Edit: I asked him why there was a hammer in the bathroom. He says he knows he took it in but has no idea why.

Afraid. Or Gaslighting?

This post might become a little jumbled. The last 24 hrs has been a bit of a ride. As my emotions and thoughts are all over the place this post might reflect that.

I was watching a youtube vid by a guy evaluating the Tiger King show. I’ve not watched Tiger King but I’m interested in body language, and he does body language. One of the things he says is; watch him. He says something, then turns to her as if asking ‘was that right? did I say it right?’. She is in control, he needs reassurance that he’s still in her good books. He’s afraid of her. (might be paraphrasing, but that’s the gist.) My jaw dropped. My partner does that all the time. Acting like he’s afraid of me. Sometimes when we’re alone but also in front of other people. “I have to walk around you like I’m on eggshells”, my partner says. “You just go off over nothing”. Am I doing that? I’ve been angry a few times, who doesn’t get angry? But as far as I know, I’ve never been angry over nothing. An example of my getting angry: He says something outrageous, let’s call it ‘a woman’s place is in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant’… not necessarily that, but that caliber of ‘outrageous’. I respond as you might expect. He says; ‘We’ll talk about it when you’re not hormonal’. (Which I read as: when you agree with me, you’re not hormonal). But now, I’m wondering, AM I abusive? DO I threaten him? I will, absolutely, defend myself. It’s a verbal thing, on both… hum. I was going to say, its a verbal thing on both our sides, but that’s not true anymore. He has started to get physical in his murder attempts. Am I becoming abusive?

Or is it a magnificent case of gaslighting? Convince me, and anyone else, I am the abusive one, he’s just a poor, innocent man dealing with a woman who goes off on nothing. And I guess, you have to define ‘nothing’. To him, saying something outrageous is nothing. He doesn’t mean it, he’s frequently just changed sides during an argument/debate. It’s not the subject, it’s about getting reactions.

Gaslighting is making you doubt your own reality. Am I abusive?

He says he’s afraid of me, and now I am absolutely afraid of him. Another thing that happened in this last 24 hours, but I’ll make a different post on it, as I think it might get long.

If I Cry, He Wins

Background; I’m sick with what I suspect as covid 19, classic presentation for the first week. But it seems to drag on and on. I mention to partner, all the times he’s talked to his doctor friends, he never tells them I’m sick. I tell him he’s been disregarding everything I’ve said from day one. He denies this even though he’s told me a few times, flat out, I don’t have it. I gave my partner a written list of all the symptoms I’d had over a week ago.

He gets a little snotty about it and I respond in kind. We decide we don’t know what ‘a fever’ is, the definition the medical community is going by.

He calls one of his doctor friends, who say; ‘In this country, ‘a fever’ is anything over 37c’ (meaning, anything over normal). This puts me in ‘sick’ country. He calls a different friend doctor.

So his friend returns the call and my partner walks in and says something to the effect of; you want to talk to him? He’s standing two feet away from me and shouts. I don’t remember the exact words but the effect I came away with was ‘you can talk to him but I already have and you’d be a dick if you do’.

I say, ‘did you tell him my symptoms?’

‘yes’

So I say, no need to talk to him, then.

He speaks with him another 20 mins or so, coming back with two questions. How long have I been smoking and how long have I had COPD. After the call, he comes back and asks if I want to know what he said.

Restraining all sarcastic remarks, I say yes.

His doctor friend says I don’t have it. If I did, I would have recovered by now or I’d be dead. He says it’s just a COPD attack. A little more long winded but that was the bottom line. I didn’t interrupt, roll my eyes, or do anything other than nod. I gave the impression I bought it all. But inside, I’m thinking this just doesn’t match up with other things I’ve seen or watched.

It bothers me enough to wonder what my partner had told him. So the next day, I ask what symptoms he’d told his friend I had. Now this is word for word;

“I told him you had a fever, breathlessness, headaches, runny nose, aches, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And yes, I said ‘etcetera etcetera etcetera’, just like that.”

I said, ‘etcetera etcetera etcetera’? Honestly stunned. He said; Hey, I gave you the opportunity to talk to him yourself!

And I remember, only just then, how my partner lies. He lies with the exact truth. Then uses body language to indicate something else. But he’s on the phone, he can’t use body language to indicate they are all fake or lies. He had to do something verbally. Hence, the ‘etcetera’ business. In effect, he told his doctor friend I was faking. Just putting out symptoms and on and so on and etcetera, yadda yadda.

Of all the times he’s tried to kill me I’ve been amused. This time, I don’t feel amused. I wanted an independent, 3rd party honest opinion. He poisoned it. And implanted the idea with his friend that I’m…god knows what. A hypochondriac? Faking it? Looking for attention?

This time I feel hurt. I’ve had to stop myself from crying several times. I don’t think I’m sick enough to go to hospital. But I’m sick enough to want reasurance that I’m not imagining it, that it’ll be ok, and at what point to call for help. My partner doesn’t want me to go to the hospital either, he says because if you go, you’re likely to get it while in there. Now, that is a ligitament worry.

But the hospital is also where you go to get help. And if you need help and don’t go get help, you die. Which is okay with him, really. He knows if you’re meant to die, you will, and if you’re not meant to, you won’t. I’m fine with him believing that. I’m not fine with him pushing that onto me.

OR I am a hypochondriac.

I’m too tired for this shit.

The other day, I asked my partner where the large ace bandages were. I’d done something to my knee while sleeping, suspect I’d laid on it in such a way the joint slid sideways slightly. It hurt like hades and was difficult to walk on. Now, I didn’t tell him why I wanted the bandage or what I think I’d done. I just asked him where the bandages were.

Two days later, he had a ‘broken rib’.

He can’t tolerate it when it isn’t him that is the sickest. Broken bones are the unprovable go-to for being suddenly, without reason, sick. His bones have been brittle in the past, but he’s been on the ‘normal’ scale for some years. Yet he can break bones by – breathing. Sitting. Laying down. When he has a broken rib, he finds it difficult to walk. Tells me constantly he’s an old man, now. He grunts with each step. Moans picking up a cup. Takes baby steps. The problem with all this – he only does it when he thinks I can see or hear him. He takes tiny steps until he can’t see me. Then he walks normally. It’s so incredibly childish. I tell him to go to the hospital. He says there’s nothing they can do for him. I think there’s only so much faking you can do and you can’t fake an x-ray.

This is only one example. It happens every single time.

And I’ve recently had a couple of things happen that have kind of freaked me out. He knows about one of them but not the other.

I was cooking some chicken legs. Put them in the oven, set the temp and the timer, gave them 30 minutes. The timer goes off, I check on them, and decide they need another 15 minutes. I could not, for the life of me, set the timer. I’d push the little clock icon and it kept telling me 17 hours – I couldn’t get it to change! (it was 5pm.) After messing with it for a few minutes I finally went to ask him for help. About 2 inches to the right of the clock icon is a dial, that you turn, to set the timer. Remember, I’d just set it 30 minutes previous! The second he turned it, I remembered, yeah, that’s how you do it. But when I was trying to do it…my vision kind of ended on the clock icon. I didn’t even see the dial just to the right. It wasn’t there. I didn’t think there was something there. It was just …blank. This hasn’t happened again since then, but that scared the crap out of me.

Then a few days later. I feel an abrasion on my finger. Look at it and see this scab like thing. My nose had been running so I thought it was a bit of dried snot I’d not noticed. Tried to wash it off. It didn’t wash off. I look closer. There’s a divot in my finger – a gouge about the size and shape of a long-grain rice, with this tiny, hard scab. It’s deep (rice size), but it’s not red. It’s not sore. No blistering. Just a gouge with a tiny scab. I have no memory at all of hurting myself. I have no idea how long I’d had it (must have been some time, it was pretty much healed by the time I saw it. Or noticed it, rather.) And that scared the fuck out of me. I didn’t tell him about it. I didn’t want to see what he’d do to himself to top that.

Come to think of it, I think he did top it. Maybe a week later we were expecting an amazon delivery and his medication. The door buzzes, he goes to answer it. He thanks the amazon guy, sets the box next to the door and goes into the kitchen. I ask what the delivery is. He bitches that the medical people only delivered one box. I’m looking at the amazon box. I tell him its an amazon box. He says his dry goods delivery got shorted, he’s only got one box. He has gotten very forgetful lately. But that kind of confusion, I don’t know. I do know it happened after the oven incident.

I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. The problem with dealing with a known lier is you can’t tell when they’re telling the truth. And I’m sounding paranoid. One of the tells for getting gaslighted is you start thinking you’re crazy.

Or, as one of my ‘friends’ once said, maybe you are crazy.

I did have an appointment to have an MRI, before an as yet unset appointment with the memory people. I had a massive asthma attack and had to cancel the MRI. I asked him to call the memory people to see if I could still be seen without it. The front desk woman wanted to ‘reschedule’ the (as yet unset) appointment for six months. Partner said that the decision was above her pay grade and to have the doctor call. The doctor has not called. He has not followed up on it. They already ‘lost’ me once, missing two years of follow-ups. I guess I’m going to get lost again. I could call, myself, of course. But for two things. I’ve developed some weird-ass phone phobia. And I have a real hard time with accents, I have to watch people’s lips.

One of the reasons I put these two incidences on this post was to help me remember them when I ever get to see the memory clinic again. It may not matter.

I’m tired. Not necessarily physically tired, but emotionally tired. I don’t feel like I have any endurance left. I can’t just keep on fighting it.

I’m also having some language problems and the social problems that come from it. But that is for another post.

Shake it off

My partner was gone a couple of weeks. When he got back, lots of things were discussed. But the thing I want to talk about first is my hand waving.

A few hours after getting back, he says ‘come here’. He’s standing about 5 inches in front of me. I figure I’m going to get a hug. I brace myself. I can do it. I can take a hug. His hands reach up – but it’s not a hug. He’s going for my face. He’s going to touch my face. Not hit, just touch. I can’t stand having my face touched. I don’t know if he saw something in my expression or if my face wasn’t his target. His hands sweep up, past my face, and bury themselves in my hair. He says: you washed your hair.

I don’t know why he feels compelled to make these kinds of comments. Every time he touches me, he mentions my skin is dry, like I didn’t know that. I won’t let him put lotion on my back (the only place I can’t reach) because every single time he does, he hurts me. He puts so much pressure on, it’s like he’s trying to oil bovine leather. I can feel every ridge of his fingerprints, as he scrapes up and down my back. How does he even do that? Is my skin so sensitive I can feel them, or is he doing some kind of angle and pressure that turns them into sandpaper?

So, he says ‘you washed your hair’. I back up, smack up against the refrigerator. I slide to the right, away from him. I walk into the living room (only a few steps) and I see I’m making ‘go away’ motions with my hands. At least, in my head, they are ‘go away’ motions. Also seeing it as someone standing, looking at myself, they look remarkably like ‘flapping.’ I was so distressed, I was literally beside myself.

I think the main problem was I got surprised. I was braced for a hug and that didn’t happen. But for pete’s sake, all he did was touch my hair. How that triggered hand flapping, I don’t know.

Munchausen by proxy?

A while back, forget which day, I mentioned on this blog that I’d really wished I could talk to a psychologist over the phone. It was the Ellen Show post if you want to glance at it. As far as I remember, it is the only time I’ve mentioned it.

Last week, partner came home from a meeting with his psychologist. (I was unaware he’d even gone, I thought he was giving a blood sample.) He hands me a note, which was the telephone number he’d gotten from his psyc, a number for phone consultations for a psychologist. I thanked him. And a few minutes later, my heart broke.

I do not recall saying anything to him on the subject. I’d only mentioned it here.

Now, I know at one point he was monitoring my online activity. Things he’d say on subjects I’d googled a few days previously. I found the dongle on the back of my computer. If he is – well, basically stalking me – I don’t know how he’s doing it. He’s the tech-savvy one, not me.

So him coming home with this number shattered me. I felt very violated.

But I checked the stats on that page, and it only looks like it was me that reviewed the page. So let’s say I did say something to him about it and have forgotten I did.

This is the person who says he’ll get me water/tea and ‘forgets’ by the time he’s out the bedroom door. If he forgets so easily, or quickly, how did he remember I wanted that phone number? Because if I had said something, it would have been months ago. Long enough that I’ve forgotten I said it.

I can only imagine what he’s telling his shrink about me. I know how he lies, with silence and a downward look. Maybe a little handwringing and a sniff. A monotone ‘she does the best she can.’ which is true – but the monotone voice says ‘not a damn thing’.

Sometimes, yes, he does need to look after me. When he remembers. What is he telling his shrink? I’ll be damned if I know. But… here’s the rub. I’m starting to feel crazy.

He has never had to look after any person other than himself. Ever. He’ll help his mom or dad, sure, but there’s always someone else there, as ‘back up’. It is not his job! He’s the ‘sicko’. HE IS THE SICKO. It’s everyone else’s job to take care of him. That is the way things are. It’s how it’s ever been. And he seriously resents having to look after me.

Unless I am in the hospital. Then he’s there every day. Moisturizing my feet. Combing my hair. Reading to me or watching a TV show on a laptop. People tell him how amazing he is. How dedicated and loving. They admire him.

Munchausen by proxy? Well, no. Not unless he’s triggering my illness. And I can’t say he isn’t. Maybe he just likes the admiration people give him. Doctors and nurses. It makes him feel important.

It makes me feel sick.