I’m going to assume that extreme trauma, followed by true love, followed by the trauma of watching him die has changed me.
I’ve gone from representing 2-4% of the U.S. population and only 0.5% of the female population to 1-3% and 1.5% respectively. That can’t be good for my future romantic prospects, if any; however, apparently I am now more conventionally “feminine”. I think I can credit Axel for that part of my transformation, for making me feel happy to be a woman, for four wonderful years.
This personality type change gives me a clue as to why I don’t want to be a technical writer any more (an ideal profession for an INTJ) and would rather travel in some capacity that involves human contact with non-engineers (not that I have anything against engineers). I don’t count my upcoming adventure as part of that “travel” although obviously it will be, because I hope that this particular journey isn’t all that long, at the onset at any rate.
As much as I prefer to be some man’s “left hand” that’s probably unlikely. I’m going to have to be my own leader I suspect, which of course is likely to enlarge the pool of men petitioning me to dominate them. Sure, could happen. Number 5001 could be the lucky one! Or dreadfully unlucky as the case would be.
The reason that I don’t dominate men is because I am repulsed by submissive men. For some, that’s all the more reason to weather the humiliation of my rejection. If being repulsed was at all fun for me, I’d be game, but it isn’t. No I don’t feel that submissive men have “the right” to my attention any more than is required to be civil.
I don’t feel that anyone has “the right” to my attention but Axel.
Meanwhile, I admit to be looking forward to being so alone in the world that I need not be concerned with myself just for the sake of someone else. This will allow me to take more risks.
I don’t look forward to missing Axel even though for all extensive purposes he—the man I know—is already gone and I am therefore already in mourning.
However once in a while, traces of the old Axel emerge, sometimes in just a twinkle of his eyes. Those moments make my day. He still has a sense of humor even if I don’t always understand it. Simple sleep deprivation on both of our parts has taken an enormous toll.
His pain however seems to be managed better now. We had a few days at the hospice center during which I petitioned for a new pharmacological regimen and a different home care nurse who I will meet some time this week. Both of these developments are a huge relief. I am understanding better how to work the hospice system for Axel’s benefit. I wish I knew before what I know now.
There are also additional things that I know which are the three possible ways that Axel could die, according to three different medical professionals:
1. Series of strokes followed by a big one. This would appear to already be in progress.
2. Morphine overdose because the pain is just too great, perhaps to occur if his condition worsens to the point that they recommend he be readmitted into the center and fitted with a morphine pump.
3. A rupture in his carotid artery causing him to bleed out nearly instantly.
I am therefore prepared for all of these possibilities. The latter is a little bit daunting given the clean-up possibilities and I have just learned that Axel has let our homeowner’s policy lapse. I suppose I will be shopping for a new policy tomorrow. I am not squeamish however and might even be so perverse as to create some sort of art out of it. Already our carpets are painted in glow-in-the-dark swirls of color.
I’ve petitioned the hospice to send us a different nurse because our “chemistry” isn’t right. I know better than to be honest about her to hospice management on the off chance that she’s the best who is available for our area and that somehow my complaint gets back to her while she’s choking off our pain meds with her iron, control-freak grip.
This young, pretty, and completely full-of-herself bitch is the effective gatekeeper between us and the pain meds. Specifically, she wants to ensure that we are sufficiently intimidated by impossible protocols that we won’t demand to speak directly with the physician in charge, who is far far too busy to be concerned with our little problems. Not her though. She has plenty of time to keep us distracted.
End of life care is a sticky area—legally, ethically, and medically. However, as far as I know the whole point of hospice care is to make the end of life as comfortable as possible. In fact, prior to hospice, simply getting a refill on a pain med was at least as difficult as attempting to “score” in a back alley, if more humiliating and expensive, and less dangerous. Albeit, what is “danger” when one is dying anyway?
International readers may be justifiably perplexed at my description of this problem, which, as far as I know is an American phenomenon. When President Richard M. Nixon created the Drug Enforcement Administration it wasn’t with an eye toward reduction of the size of government or the profits of patentable drug sales. If dying people were only of stronger character they would be delighted to suffer, free of those nasty narcotics. Fortunately, government knows best. Amen.
Axel was diagnosed as “Stage Four Plus” back in June. Therefore, it is safe to say at this point that nobody knows when he will go. Certainly not Police Nurse. However, perhaps she has protocols which require her to operate on the assumption that Axel could be miraculously cured of his cancer by taking less-than-needed amounts of pain medication, but could also be injured such as to survive cancer as a morphine and oxycodone addict, and therefore, first, she must not do this latter harm, with no suffering of his too great to forestall that possibility.
It would most certainly be a crime at this point if he were to “abuse” pain medications now wouldn’t it? However, he is simply not the type. He actually prefers to be on top of things rather than to be in a “fog”. However, sometimes the pain is so acute that he is put into a state of shock which is its own “fog”. Another cause of “fog” is his inability to sleep more than two hours at a time given that the oxycodone dose he is directed to take only lasts for two hours unless he overdoes it on the morphine contrary to his directive there.
If the reader of this blog wonders how this writer gets some of her cracked ideas, sleep deprivation due to hearing the cries of pain of the man she loves every two hours can possibly be credited.
It is too much trouble for Police Nurse to have less than one week’s notice of the need to order any new drug; however, we have thus far not been dispensed more than five day’s worth of the oxycodone, when taken as directed. Axel has therefore taken it upon himself to ration his meds. He is also still of sufficient mind and body to be able to rise up under his own steam, dispense himself the pain pill that he needs, and go back to the generally sleepless activity of his nights. If I don’t have to arise, I don’t. Lucky me. For now.
However, Police Nurse now demands that I monitor Axel’s every move. On one hand, she warns me and admonishes me that the pharmacy keeps count of all drugs; on the other hand she demands my accurate accounting. Perhaps what she really wants is to watch us both pee in a cup or to forsake sleep altogether.
I could go on in my complaints but that might risk that somehow she would manage to identify herself in this blog and thereby vindictively cut off Axel from pain meds while meanwhile forestalling the possibility that a different, more reasonable, and less a stickler for sucking up to the doctors and pharmacists above her nurse might be assigned to us.
Meanwhile I caught her gaslighting me twice in our last meeting. At first she said that the pharmacy refused to increase Axel’s dose and then admitted that they have indeed granted that increase, while denying that she had ever made the first statement. What was that about?
She also told me that a month’s worth of medication was to be shipped to us, but it wasn’t. I was put into the horribly uncomfortable position of wondering whether Axel intercepted the shipment because what I saw in the package he opened in my absence was only a week’s worth. I so regret doubting him for even an instant if that doubt was relieved when I realized the essence of the other party we’re dealing with—a gaslighting control freak with all the charm of Elle Driver:
Imagine that needle in the above video is a pain-med-and-sleep-denying mechanism in service to her standing with “Bill,” an amalgam of the so-far invisible doctor and pharmacist who are probably actually more reasonable than their stick-up-her-ass toady. I wonder if it is her romantic notions which inform her lack of honesty and objectivity. She looks to me to be a well-preserved and youth-obsessed 40 year old hearing the sound of her biological clock ticking. Can I relate? Not exactly given that I had my own tubes tied at 27. However, what we have in common in that case would be our insistence on “pleasing my man” rather than each other. Perhaps this is just one stupid catfight with the suffering offloaded onto Axel. I’m willing to bury my claws if she is, but, hey, how about those meds, bitch?
Police Nurse has now demanded that I not just take an active role in Axel’s medications but to actually police him and otherwise be “in charge” of him, so that she can gaslight me with the notion that it is I who is denying him relief and that I should be grateful to serve as her emissary to my disobedient Dominant. (Of course she is in the dark with regard to our pre-hospice lifestyle roles as is the entire vanilla world. The default vanilla option is that the wife/fiance/partner/whatever is “in charge” of these sorts of matters.)
I have a deep suspicion that she is not only a feminist but also an anti-tobacco Nazi. As such, she believes that Axel deserves to suffer. By extension, I am required to suffer to for not forcing him to quit. What sort of disobedient woman am I?
Obviously, then, Police Nurse is not familiar that the studies showing a correlation between oral cancer and past or present HPV infection are deemed more rigorous (by wiser minds than I) than studies showing a correlation between oral cancer and past or present tobacco use, given the built-in bias against tobacco in all government-funded studies since those early studies were performed under the administration of Adolph Hitler by those with a bias against “capitalists, Jews, Africans, degenerate intellectuals, and loose women,” that is, smokers.
Thanks to the Fords, Kelloggs, and other megalomaniacs that precede Hitler, longevity is considered a virtue by our greater medical establishment and is the promised reward for obedience to its ill-conceived diktats. If I am less than in awe of the mainstream medical establishment, I disdain those who can’t imagine the nerve of anyone who would dare question them.
My “sins” are a) taking an active role to attempt to prevent Axel’s crippling episodes of agony rather than merely forcing him to take all medications “as directed” even though we have not been provided enough of them to even comply with those directives; b) inconveniencing Police Nurse by asking her for more medications while requiring her to do a little listening and basic multiplication and division; c) endangering her standing with her authority figures by interfering with her gatekeeping strategies.
On the advice of friends, I attended an Al-Anon meeting. The occasion for this recommendation stems from my history with relationships with alcoholics; however, by no means could all of my relationships be characterized this way. Rather, I believe that my baggage is with narcissists, who, incidentally, may be more presupposed to alcoholism than the general population, and from whom, unfortunately, the bulk of self-actualized “sadists” can be found.
The way that I define narcissism (and its codependents) these days is that it is essentially a failure of differentiation of “self” from primary caregiver. While such a thing may occur during “The Terrible Twos” it can also arise as a direct consequence of inebriation from any narcotic or neurological degeneration.
This failure of self differentiation can result in two or more ways, but generally, it is either a refusal to recognize the personal boundaries of others or to have poor boundaries of one’s self. This is also classic “drunk” behavior. There is also a problem with uncomfortable feelings such as shame, which are unmanageable to the narcissist but yet “fitting punishment” for the codependent, who may decide to identify as narcissist eventually, as a backlash from a life of shaming, even if the shaming is imaginary (such as for a Feminist).
But I digress.
At my first Al-Anon meeting the majority of the participants were female. Of those males, one had boobs and most of the others appeared to me to me to be otherwise emasculated or over self-deprecatory.
The women however were suspiciously “empowered”.
Statements such as, “us women take care of everyone before ourselves,” belied the presence of expensive hairstyles, manicures, and outfits, and the apparent love of hearing one’s own voice, drone on and on and on.
My half-baked theory is this:
1. Women with alcoholic boyfriends/husbands/lovers/sons are embarrassed in front of their “sisters” that they haven’t adequately “shaped him up” or “kept him in line”, and therefore require validation when they “stop trying to fix him”.
2. Affirmation from their sisters that they did the right thing, “leaving the bastard” and “looking after myself” compensates for that loss of status in their eyes for “choosing the bum in the first place.”
3. “Self-medication” is about the only thing left for many men in a culture which shames them for merely existing.
4. Persons tired of being “shamed” tend to do a lot of “shaming” themselves.
5. Men and women who feel “victimized” by alcoholics aren’t particularly compatible with each other except as “sisters” but that doesn’t stop emasculated men from thinking that “they’ll be the one” who can persuade a female codependent to try “emasculated” as a change from “narcissistic”. Yes. I got hit on. No. I didn’t parlay in kind.
I think that I will continue to find solace and comfort among cigar aficionados (and aficionadas) more so than self-actualized “victims”.
If you or someone you know has been helped by Al-Anon, I’m delighted. However, that does not make Al-Anon a one-size-fits-all solution to codependency.
I think I would like to try hypnosis as a way of breaking out of patterns conditioned into me under duress and by repetition. I think it would also be helpful if I were to find a way to happiness that did not involve massaging my own masochism. As I get older, the pool of prospective partners is looking so dim that I am afraid that I might relax my standards and end up with a psycho. Celibacy is also an option. It is fortunate that I’m repulsed by the mere smell of alcoholism and prefer men who have all their wits about them (such as is necessary if one wishes to engage in exotic or risky activity). Men who are in charge of themselves and their environment turn me on. However, I also understand why one might want to let it all hang out and otherwise act the fool with their nonjudgmental male buddies. Although I might be confused for a male or transwoman at times due to my size, muscularity, or fondness for cigars, mistaking me for a father figure or male confidant is bound to backfire. Like most women, I prefer to see my hero uncompromised. A broken hero is deeply disconcerting or at the least causes my sex drive to vanish in favor of my maternalism. Yes of course I’d like to help him, but that “help” does not include submission.
Meanwhile, I hope to serve as an inspiration for all those who are beginning to question the narratives of Feminism, Equalism, Cultural Marxism, Health-Nazism, and Gynocentrism. Perhaps that is the sex substitute that will be the facilitator of my recovery from codependence.
I came across this old file on my computer and thought I would pass it on to you all. I always enjoy Mark Twain and here he takes on the nannies who would tell us how to live our lives. Incredibly refreshing to read!
Originally published in Sketches, Old and New, 1893
I don’t want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man’s health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years’ indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc. etc. And you are always figuring out how many…
Unable to divorce him without losing all income, to earn money greater than a nominal amount, or even legally change my name or address, my international con-artist husband did
caprizchka 