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.

MWSA

It’s been a rough week. For a change, it’s not my partner who’s giving me a hard time. He’s been really nice these last few months. I don’t expect it to last. No, it’s not him. It’s everything else.

World events. I read and watch the news. Since Trump got elected president, the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. I am not a Trump fan. I do try to keep an open mind. Just one example: I figured, no one had ever tried to out-crazy Kim Jong Un before, maybe it’ll work? I kept giving him excuses. I did try. But it was like every time he opened his mouth, he said something that got my back up. … anyway, I hadn’t planned on this being an anti-Trump post. I wanted to touch on the tariff thing he has going on with China.

He keeps telling people how the tariffs will mean China has to pay us more. How they will pay for our commodities. Over and over, until it got to the point where I wasn’t sure how tariffs worked anymore.

This is called gaslighting. Being told something so often and repeatedly, that you come to believe it, even though you know it’s not true.

It’s not just Trump and his menagerie of sycophants who are currently and continuously in the news, as disgusting as they all are. But then there’s Alabama* putting a life sentence on doctors who give women abortions. I felt physically sick when I’d heard. Women are not going to stop from having and enjoying sex (sorry guys, that horse got loose a long time ago). What this law is going to do is make women go to dangerous lengths to stop a pregnancy. My grandmother had a wire clothes hanger termination when she was 17. My great-grandmother did it. Now, women only need to take a pill. The ‘fruits’ of rape do not have to be born. And one of those places that will sell you that pill is China. Unfortunately, they don’t have any regulations on how safe these pills need to be. But when you’re against a wall, a lot of women will take the chance.

It makes me sick thinking of the unholy choices women are going to have to make.

Then there are the deaths of Doris Day and Tim Conway. Two people I admired even though I never met them. Their deaths make me sad.

Then there’s Barr, for god sakes, the damn head of the DOJ, spouting conspiracy theories. And Trump saying now that Meuller has turned in the report, any further action is treason. Investigate the investigators! I’ve read the Meuller report, all of it. Repeatedly saying ‘no collusion, no obstruction’ is just another attempt at gaslighting. I’m getting gaslit from my partner, I sure in hell don’t need it from my president, too.

I’m not sleeping well. My stomach hurts from tension. I keep getting stabbing temple headaches. ‘Mindfulness’ is a placebo that isn’t working. Even my mental safe place isn’t working. I feel shattered. Cracked just enough to have all hope slowing seeping out my eyes.

And this word, ’embolden’. I don’t like this word, I don’t think it’s accurate enough. Reporters saying; so-and-so was emboldened by Trump policy… No. These people have always been here. They’ve always had brass balls. They’ve always slug their tar and sludge. They’re not ’emboldened’. They are enabled – empowered.

This week, I feel shattered. There’s too much going on and I feel overwhelmed. Beaten up. Enough. The world needs to go sane again. MWSA. yup yup.

*for some reason, I published Alabama as Virginia. Senior moment! Corrected.

The Ellen Show

I’ve been struggling with depression. Not cut your own neck depression, but curl up in a ball and rock, kind of depression. My brain just cycled around all the things I’ve screwed up in my life. It’s a long list. There’s a person on my social media list, who is constantly posting affirmation memes. In honesty, it drives me nuts. Get over it or shut up! Which is totally the wrong thing to think, much less say. I do understand. It’s how she’s dealing with her shit. It’s not how I do. Which got me to thinking, how do I deal with it?

Up until now, distraction was my game plan. I play an MMORPG. Or, I did, until just recently. I’ve not played for a couple of months, and it really is impacting my mental health. Without that distraction, I sink deeper into depression. It was literally my only social contact (as I don’t count social media as ‘contact’). So without that distraction, what to do?

Browsing through youtube, I came across an Ellen DeGeneres show. I watched it, got a giggle, and watched another. And another. Soon, Ellen was the only thing youtube suggested to me. I’ve known of Ellen for a long time but didn’t watch her. Now I was watching a couple of hours every day. She really did cheer me up.

It wasn’t instantaneous. It took weeks. But I’m not as depressed as I was. I’ve still got a way to go. I really should see a psychiatrist. But gawd, that would require going out X amount of days, and all the prep work that means. I can’t just decide to do something and pop out the door on a whim. Two days at least, for planning. From shower to dressing to being able to breathe. I’ve tried finding someone to talk to, who would talk to me on the phone. That was a washout. That would truly be perfect for me.

So for now, I watch The Ellen Show, get some giggles, and hope it brings me up enough to stop rocking.

Egypt & The Impossible Task

This must have been about 10 years ago, now. I had a bucket list which included going to Egypt and seeing the pyramids and Valley of the Kings, you know, the usual. Partner was aware of this. One day, he says, “I’ll take you to Egypt. But only if you learn hieroglyphics, because what’s the point of going somewhere if you can’t read the language?”

This was actually kind of a silly thing to say, ’cause people do it all the time. On the other hand, I’d always been interested in hieroglyphics, and hey, trip to Egypt. So I agreed, I’d learn hieroglyphics and he’d take me to Egypt.

I got a good book and started teaching myself hieroglyphics. I actually found it kind of easy. After a couple of weeks of daily study, I was starting to be able to ‘free read’. Without needing to flip constantly to the cheat sheet. I showed him how well I was doing.

What! He says. You can’t do that! You can’t read hieroglyphics! I can’t read them and if I can’t read them, you can’t.

I’m dyslexic, I said. They’re just pictographs. It’s easier to read than English, once I know what it stands for.

No. He thinks about it for a micro-second, then continued, I’ll take you to Egypt if you stop smoking.

In that moment I knew he’d given me an ‘impossible task’. Not his fault we didn’t go, right, as I was just too stupid to learn hieroglyphics. I put my pencil away, put the book on my bookshelf, got online and did something else. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t open the book again. As far as I was concerned, the subject and goal were over, dead. He knew I wouldn’t give up smoking for this. Especially since it was pretty obvious if I did give up smoking, he’d just come up with something else.

I think I was upset a couple of days. I remember I was mad about it for a long time. Just the fact he used a dream of mine to play games with me. And it was a building block of our marriage problems. It was a stone against him that never moved. I never spoke of it, but it was always there, influencing how I perceived his motivations.

A couple of years (!) later, he comes up to me and says: You can stop yelling at me about Egypt.

I kind of snort and say, I never said a word.

I know, he says, but in my head, you’ve yelled at me every day. So I’ll take you to Egypt. Except you’ll need to get better, health-wise.

And there it was, the third impossible task. COPD doesn’t ever get better. You can stop getting worse, I’m told, but you never get better. So I patted him on the knee and agreed. When I get better. Knowing it would never happen.

I’m thinking of this because I’ve been thinking of picking up hieroglyphics again. It was fun, I did enjoy it, and I shouldn’t let his being an asshat stop me from doing something I like. And I just this second realized, it will probably remind him of his dick move every time he sees me with the book. And that will just be a side order of sweet.

Hey, I never said I was a saint. Or even very nice, although I used to be. I got over that.

Wash, Rinse, Repeat

Last three-ish months have been quite nice. It’s common for him to go a while as Mr. Nice Guy. Makes a girl relax, you know, so when the sucker punch is thrown, she doesn’t see it coming, right? Only, I’ve been expecting it.

Every few weeks he’ll mention; ‘You need something, just ask. I’m here to help.‘ So when I’m having trouble breathing, I’ll ask him to get me some tea. (Hot caffeine is good to relax bronchial constriction and I can’t drink coffee as it hurts my stomach.) Which he does, cheerfully enough. I’ve even woken him up to do it for me – sometimes a cup of tea is the difference between being okay and calling emergency.

A few days ago he started saying his back hurt. I tried not to bother him as much as I could. I was having fair days, so it was okay. I told him to wear his back brace, and he said it helped but that it was still painful. So I gave him some over-the-counter pain meds, the ‘good stuff’. 😉 Then the next day I had a spike. Couldn’t even go to the bathroom without having trouble breathing. I (breathlessly) asked him if he could get me tea. He said sure, no problem.

While he was getting me tea, I went and took a nebulizer treatment. This took about 5 minutes and I started to feel better. I felt like I could make my own tea, so headed to the kitchen. The water was heating and I told him I could do it. He said, no no, I’ll get it! I said, I’m feeling better, I can do it. Again, he said no, he’s on it.

Now, I’m not going to argue with the man over this. So I said ‘okay’, turned around and went back to my computer. I think my ‘okay’ might have been a touch too cheerful.

Five minutes later he comes hobbling into the room. He says, ‘I didn’t fill it all the way, I was afraid I’d spill it’. He sets it down and turns away. I watch. He’s bent over like he’s a 150, he’s taking baby steps like he’s hobbled. He says: ‘Im okay when I’m sitting still, but moving is painful!’* He groans, he huffs, he literally inches across the room. He’s overacting so badly it was embarrassing to watch. Once he was out of the room, and couldn’t see me (and I guess, thought I couldn’t see him) he straightened up and walked normally.

See, I was supposed to feel guilty for asking him for help. This is an old theme of emotional abuse: say he’s there to help and if you ask for help he will do or say something that is supposed to make you feel guilty for asking. It used to work, too. At one point I swore to myself I’d crawl over broken glass before asking him for help. Then I realized that’s exactly what he wanted – not for me to crawl, but for me to feel guilty. Screw that.

*This is one of the things I truly can’t argue with, as it’s something that I feel. When I’m having an attack, I’m okay if I’m sitting still, but if I have to move, I can’t breathe. And if its a pleurisy attack, the pain is indescribable. I’ve told him those exact words, I’m okay if I’m still, but it hurts when I move. The difference between us, is I’m telling the truth. Maybe he is, too. It just feels like he’s using it as a jab at my asking for help.

A New Low

About a week ago, I noticed all the icon’s on my desktop and shifted around. I’d done nothing that would do that although I had done a disk frag. I figured at the time, it’d done something. Now, I’m not too sure.

The sad thing for me is the fact this thought even crosses my mind. Today I discovered my photos, my writing, and my ebooks are all gone. When I got this computer, I transferred all those things from my previous computer, I always do. Once I saw everything successfully transferred/copied, I deleted the old files. These three subjects are very important to me. They practically define me. I had them on this computer. Now they’re gone.

I think my husband somehow got into my computer and removed them. They weren’t in my bin. They aren’t on the computer. He has stalked my computer before, using a dongle. *checks* No, no dongle today. But there are other ways for him to get in. I thought I’d closed off this computer from the family network, but he’s much more computer savvy than I am. Next, I’ll try a master password, or password protecting the log in.

I think I’ve mentioned how he tricked me into giving away my paper books. And how he tried to trick me into giving away my DVDs. Variations on the things I love. He is destroying the things I love, with the added flair of having me do it to myself. Only this time I think, he did it.

I’m also suspecting he’s reading this. If so, I think now would be a good time to mention I have things scattered all over the place. I can not be silenced from the grave, as it were.

He’s out right now. I tried calling him to see if he has any old thumb drive that would have my old stuff. He’d give them to me if he does as he’s still pretending to be a good guy. He’s not returned my call. He’d said he’d be gone for hours so it’ll be a while before I know if they are gone forever.

It will not be the first time I’ve lost everything I’ve loved. Sure, it hurts, some more than others. At the moment I have shimmering eyes and shaking hands. He will never see this, I refuse to let him see this. He would fap off over it for months.

Killing me, that’s old school. Men kill women all the time and half the time is a current or x-partner. You’d think just killing would be enough. IF he’s done this, it’s sole purpose is to wound me where the bleeding doesn’t show.

Something else occurs to me just as I’m about to publish this. A couple of days ago, he got some mega-ram in the mail. He refused to say why he got it, just wanted to upgrade (by double) his current ram. He was very defensive about it. The thought flittered across my mind that he couldn’t control 2 computers with what he had, his and mine. Now that thought has taken root and become a little more probable.