Ghost Kitty

I’d had my best friend for over 20 years. She was my heart, the reason I kept struggling, the reason I stayed here. But her pain became too much and I finally did the unthinkable. I put my kitty to sleep. Oh, god, the pain is still too fresh.

I told my family, I hope the hell she comes back and haunts me, because life without her would be unbearable. So this might be wishful thinking. It might be my mind protecting me from life without her. If so… sure, okay, I’m in.

The day after she passed, I hear a meow. About four feet from me, at ground level, but so faint it sounded like it came from outside. I turn and look at the spot. I say “hey, baby“. And that was it. The meow sounded a little frustrated, as if she’d been trying to get my attention for some time. The interpretation would have been: ‘WTF happened? I wake up from a nap and the world has changed. Mom, are you listening to me? Mom!‘

Then nothing more. I figured that was it, I got a meow, and count myself blessed.

And then – last night.

As usual, I wasn’t asleep. It was so late, it was early. I’m curled up trying hard to go to sleep. I hear a faint meow – coming from the hall, just outside the bathroom door. My heart literally stopped. I debate with myself. The one, single, blessing I got from her passing, was I didn’t have to get up in the middle of the night to feed her. She was a night eater. It was hard enough in the last couple of years, but I’d be damned if I was going to get up for a cat that doesn’t need food!

This has been her routine for a couple of years. Go use the sand box. Announce it loudly, until someone (me) came and inspected it, told her she was a good girl (and yes, I was blessed she remembered where her box was. She was going senile at this point. And yes, she wouldn’t stop yelling until I told her she was a good girl.)

So I debate, get up or not? And I concluded I would hate myself if she made the effort to appear and I ignore it. I check the time. 5:30 am. Her usual time for wanting to be fed. I got up.

I have not gone to the bathroom alone in over 20 years. The last couple of weeks has been rough, not having her guard me as I did my business. I got up, used the toilet, said; ‘Okay, baby, let’s go to bed.’, in the hope that 1) she wouldn’t demand I ‘feed’ her and 2) she might actually come. I get in bed and hope I feel a little bounce and weight movement – but nothing. But I had a meow! And that made me happy, even if it was at the crack of dawn. I fell asleep.

A couple of hours later, I wake up, bladder insistence. I lever myself up, so I’m sitting on the edge of the bed – and freeze. Again, my heart skips a beat. Under my palm was a wet spot. It was freezing cold.

She didn’t do it all the time, but she frequently drooled in her sleep. And my bed has an electric blanket – there are no cold spots on my bed.

I turn the light on and check the sheet. There is no way a ghost kitty could leave physical evidence, right? I mean, I really don’t know, but I checked with the light on. There was no wet spot. But it was cold there, warming as I touched it.

Did my baby sleep with me? I want to say yes. But if she didn’t, if it’s just my mind protecting me from the grief, I’m okay with that.

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.

Hysterical

Back in my day, says the granny, they were called buttons, or hot buttons. When someone was emotionally manipulating you, they were pushing your buttons. I don’t think, or at least don’t remember, an expression for getting triggered. Perhaps ‘trip’, as in having a bad trip, which could happen even without pharmaceuticals.

I do have buttons that are going to guarantee setting me off. Injustice. any-ism. Inequality. Abuse. I get angry.

I had recently watched an Australian show about a woman with 2500 ‘split personalities’, which they now call Dissociative Identity Disorder. I didn’t buy it at first, come on, 2,500 of them? But by the end of the show, I was willing to concede it could have happened. A couple of weeks later, I saw a show about Sybil. Rember that movie/book? With Sally Fields. Sybil had 12 ‘personalities’. This show was called Sybil; a brilliant hysterical? Filmed in 2014. The premise for this show was Sybil was a con, her psychiatrist was a con. It was all faked – seriously, 12 personalities?

I don’t have any triggers about Sybil. I watched it with my kids, I only had good memories of it. So I wasn’t sure what had triggered me. And boy, was I triggered. I couldn’t sleep, my heart was racing. My hands shaking. My mind spun around. They wanted us to believe 2500 personalities in one person, but not 12 in another? And my god – hysterical? They called Sybil hysterical?

And boom, that was it. They called her hysterical. She was angry. She was hurt. She was defending herself. Hysterical? Oh, hell no.

That’s how it happens. A woman get angry? no no no. She’s hysterical. A man can be angry. He can be enraged to the point of murder. But its women who are infantized. Demeaned. Crippled by the social expectation to eat it. Swallow it down. Don’t show anger. If you don’t, you will be called ‘hysterical’.

Fine, you think the Sybil case is just a big con. Fine. Say that. But say she was hysterical? Fuuuuuuuuck no.

I am not hysterical. I’m angry. I am fucking pissed. In the immortal words of JI Jane, ‘Bite my dick‘.

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.