A few years ago, a friend texted me that her marriage was a shitshow thanks to cancer.

It wasn’t mean or backstabby stuff, just two people too tired to endure the strain that cancer puts on relationships.

I didn’t understand, but I listened. Some months later, she passed away. I don’t know how her husband felt about her death, but I was in denial that she was gone.

There are lots of reasons I wish she was still around. One of them is simply to say I get it now.

I’ve written about the horrible cancer stuff for years. The crappy doctors, the insurance, the craniotomy, the chemo, the radiation, the IBS, the puking, so why not this too?

I’ve tried every way I know to talk to Dan about this brain cancer stuff, and the anxiety in particular, but when I go there, he leaves the room. Literally, physically walks away.

I’ve asked him to watch videos that sum up what I’ve learned about anxiety and panic attacks—because I struggle to explain things verbally on my best days—but he won’t even do that.

I’m so tired.

I know he is too. He’s been sick for decades and didn’t ask for his wife to be disabled and needy. He checks out, dissociates, and I have no fucking clue how to deal with that except to borrow a line from Billy Joel and acknowledge that he gets to make decisions too.

And play video games. And fuss over the cats. And watch Stargate reruns.

I am not mad about it. I understand this is hard for him. But I am hurt and lonely. He does every little thing I ask for, but I want to be well enough to do the little things. I want a break from this overwhelming emotional labor.

I think that some might think it cruel to write about my caregiver on my blog. Maybe it is. Or maybe I’m overthinking things again. However, there are two points I want to make up front to rationalize doing this: 1.) I have tried many, many times over the last eight years to have these conversations face-to-face with Dan, but I can’t make him talk to me, and 2.) he is not in the habit of reading the shit I write anyway.

Because I can’t afford therapy and it’s not feasible for other reasons, I blog. Writing is the one thing I haven’t lost, so I cling to it. Perhaps a little too desperately.

Anyway, I don’t think Dan is trying to hurt me, he just does. In fact, from what I have been able to deduce I think it’s his fear of hurting me and his unwillingness to deal with sad stuff that shuts him down. If I’m wrong about that, it’s not my fault.

He doesn’t talk about it. All I can do is guess that his brain bots are telling him depressing bullshit about himself and he’s eating it up like a Boomer watching Fox News (Fox Propaganda more like).

Dan and I aren’t really on speaking terms at the moment because I tried to tell him today that I need him to unload his burdens somewhere else because I can’t fix it. It triggers my panic attacks when he just brain dumps about how terrible everything is.

And he went outside for a smoke after saying something about how he’s not allowed to talk about his problems. I had to finish my thoughts by text message. He hasn’t spoken to me since except to ask about dinner.

For the record, self, you did not choose to have a Grade 2 astrocytoma. And you did not choose slow-growing mental exhaustion.

I could spend the rest of my life—decades maybe—in this hell.

Yay.