Emptiness

This should go in 2010. It was a draft for years and then I looked at it and the date changed.
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Who am I kidding? To be empty you have to at least have the capacity to be full of something -- I suppose being full of shit counts for that then. But seriously...I have this impending sense of doom and an uneasy feeling of "do I even exist?" In the next few days Sharon (still my wife) is going in for angioplasty to correct her CCSVI at _______ hospital. I was so full of excitement in the weeks leading up to this. Partly because I will be taking vacation time, but mostly because I so long to see a turning point toward her recovery. Now, as the day approaches, I have nothing but a numb feeling of fearfulness.

Part of it could be all the crazy things she has said to me in the past few months. The whole Charlie thing. The whole "if I get better, I'm leaving you behind" thing. The whole "you're an asshole and I can't get far enough away from you...oh, by the way you're neglecting _____ ." I guess that's not emptiness, that's anger at feeling mistreated and under-appreciated.

Oh, and she found out about this blog so anything I say, I may as well say to her face. It's just that I hate confrontations. And yet I am no good at hiding my "empty" feeling. She'll catch on and ask me what is up.

I read your email, that's what.

The whole Charlie thing. The "I love you's", the dirty talk, the same Josh Turner song she emailed to me, she emails to him. I feel like whatever it is that she says to me she is also saying to him. Only, except the negative stuff. That she reserves for me alone. How lucky I am. 

One part of me is the understanding guy that says "yeah, she has a pretty lonely life and wants to have attention," which this guy gives her by way of emails and phone calls (when I'm not home). I should be the bigger man and ignore it because certainly this 70 year old MARRIED man in Minnesota is not a threat. 

Except that he is... He is feeding her all kinds of bullshit about how he loves her and will care for her (yeah, what about your CURRENT wife?) He has promised to buy a ranch and move her out there, and he wishes he could hold her and kiss her and lay there next to her and on and on...

And she is enjoying it, as is evident by her responses to his emails. If she were not disabled and in dire need of help, I think I would be more likely to make it a big issue, like, "choose bitch." But when I hear some of the things she says to me when she is PMSing, constipated or having an exacerbation, well, I know that she is not in her right mind.

I get to feeling so bad, either way. If she is so messed up that she thinks this guy is something, I have such sadness and pity for that. And if I am so fucked up that she thinks this guy worth risking our marriage over, then I am also saddened by this. Am I truly worth that little to her?  

I don't think that just because a person is physically unable to leave a relationship, that they can't have checked out already. 

I hate what our life has become. I can do chores, I can do projects, I can do the work week, I can even do the nursing duties and even enjoy some of these things, because I feel needed. I feel like I can't be doing wrong, when all I'm doing is good and necessary. 

I just can't stand the thought of her carrying on with this guy and getting all titillated by this ex-boyfriend who can't let go of a memory. I can't hide my feelings very well and this is eating me up.

Plants need sunlight, water, soil and room to grow. But if they have all these things they are not yet guaranteed to be healthy and happy. They could be lacking some micro-nutrient or have some unwanted pest that eats them up.

My Boopie plant is withering.

When she revives she can be a prickly rose or a tender blossom. I never know which I am going to get.

I am most assuredly to blame, as I am not providing her with some vital element that she needs. Else, what would she see in this F'ing aging bullshit artist.

Last night we tried for more than an hour to untangle her hair and wound up cutting it and still not getting all the tangles out. She wants to shave her head. I know she will regret it if she does.

In the weeks ahead, post surgery, much may or may not happen. I have a dream of her coming out of it on the operating table and everything being rectified like some fairy tale happy ending. Like a dream, she will arise from the table, rip off the hospital gown, and be wearing her wedding dress. 

She will swing her legs down on the floor like nothing and say "let's get out of here." And we will go to Fort Bragg or Half Moon Bay and walk on the beach as we did before. And this is when I get all choked up.

Ah, not emptiness...just terrible sadness.