Jennaishealed.org

Ok, well its technically on tuesday, but her family went to see her yesterday and I am going (finally) to go see her tomorrow or tuesday.  I am feeling much, much better, and have to kind of shake my head at what ive posted recently.  Im sitting outside a public library hotspot in sweltering abalama heat so I dont want to go into it too much now, but Jenna (according to reports) is doing really well.  They moved her into an all-female side of the building she is in, called the Townhouse, and she seems to be doing really well on the ritalin.  Cooper had a good time and everybody enjoyed him being there.  Not much else to report at this point, I gotta get out of this heat, get to Home Deep-oh and get another set of keys made for the house and some other last minute items.  I think finally being ready to get out of here is helping my mood a lot, and my sciatic leg is feeling better too, which helps in more ways than one.  Anyways, more later!

grrr! (slaps self!)

so ive been calling her on the “participant line” which is a common line that the patients get to take calls on. The guy who answered the phone was obviously a patient, and I could barely understand what he was saying. I worry over Jenna’s slow speech patterns but this person’s speech was so mangled I had to ask him to repeat himself a few times. He seemed like a really nice person, and it just devastated me to think how brain injuries really mess people up. After I got off the phone with Jenna I just lay there weeping over how badly this unknown-to-me person must have been injured. Its like just under the surface I am ready to start crying over almost anything. There was a mention of a girl in california who had a similar accident to Jenna in the paper out there (someone on the FAQ sent me the link) and my heart just goes out to all the families out there, and of course the injured person themselves. But the person who answered the phone last night and the girl in the newspaper, and even Jenna now that she is on her bipolar medication, they all seem very positive and I dont think understand how devastated their lives truly are. Jenna in particular tells me how thankful she is that the accident even happened, and I just sit there blown away by how she can believe that. She tells me this, I think, in light of how her un-treated bipolar condition affected her quality of life before the accident, and I can only wish that she had been on the bipolar medication she’s on now, then.  I hate to be so negative, I should just be happy that Jenna is happy, and I am, but it still knocks the wind out of me how much she has lost.  Its like the gift that keeps on giving, in reverse.  I am definitely being too negative, I just can’t seem to help it.  Jenna is happy and is being taken care of and is very proud of Cooper and is happy that I am still in her life (I will never not be), so I should just be grateful for all that, grateful that she is still around at all and grateful that I have the opportunity to mean so much to someone else.  That sounds weird but lots of things do.

I’ve been giving my attempt to “step back” a lot of thought and it just doesn’t seem possible.  Jenna needs my emotional support more than I need to be free of the psychological torture that comes with dealing with all the issues involved.  I think if i did just run away to an island somewhere I would be even more depressed and worthless-feeling than I am already.  Perhaps I just think about things too much, am too sensitive or whatever.  Just this morning I got up before dawn to do some window work outside before the sun hit that side of the house, and I am standing on the ladder listening to the radio, and just weeping and weeping over something that was on the radio.  Even after all this time its always right there just under the surface, and I HATE to constantly complain and whine and weep and etc., I wish I could get past it, accept it and be positive about the future.  But this kind of injury, unlike if Jenna had simply been killed in the accident, it is indeed that gift that keeps on giving (in reverse).  Maybe if she had died I would be the same way, constantly mourning her loss and etc., but … I dont know.  God I hate myself.  I WANT TO GET OVER THIS, get past it, dammit, to the point where I can just get through the day without f*cking CRYING at least once.  Dammit dammit dammit… see why I feel like such a pathetic piece of shit?  I probably just need to be on anti-depressants myself but every time I go to the doctor its another vast sum of money I can’t afford and at the moment have no hope of affording.  One of the first things I am going to do when I get to Indiana is declare bankruptcy to try to get some of my past debts wiped out and try to focus on the future more.  I think when I am around Cooper he will be a good source of positivity and focus…

I know my previous post was weird.  Something is working though, because I am almost DONE with the alabama HELLhouse.  I expect to be out of here FOREVER by monday or so.  Jenna and I still talk several times per day.  She told me today that someone in her old building hung himself somehow, and that hit home for me since I have been suicidal for some time now.  That actually has improved.  The whole stepping back thing was a necessary step so that I can move on and be Cooper’s daddy.  So much has gone on, and I just look forward to moving on.  Like I said before, Jenna has no idea about the change in me.  I still treat her the same, except I am if anything more positive towards her; I just don’t get into the micromanagement of details anymore.  I bought a power inverter for the car so I can run the laptop on the go now, so that is how I am getting online at the moment.  It is amazing how many unsecured ‘nets there are in this neighborhood!  It is now almost 10:30 and it has to be 85+ degrees and 90+% humidity here in HELLabama….  I cant wait to leave here for good!

For so long, right from the beginning, I worked with all my heart and mind towards one goal: to make Jenna whole again. I have as much as admitted it in the past here, but it looks like that just is not going to happen. So much of my self esteem has been wrapped up in Jenna’s ultimate fate, and my role in her current one, that I have become totally non-functional. trying to span the distance between full recovery and partial.

For a long time I tried to do the best I could with the whole faith thing, and believing against hope in some kind of Christian miracle. I mean, I *really* tried to believe it. The name of this website itself is testimony to that much. The funny part of all of this is that if you had asked any of my college friends about an eventual Christian conversion for Mr. Robert here, they probably would have put that at a -100000% probability. At least I would have. But maybe its like they say, the more you resist something, the more you will eventually succumb. Just ask all the moralizing preachers who are eventually caught — often literally — with their pants down on the question.

I don’t know if “succumb” is the right word. I distinctly remember being in a hallway with Jenna’s dad and some church and “believer” friends of theirs, and I so very desperately wanted Jenna to be OK, to be whole again, that I really wanted to be able to believe.  I just didnt think it was possible, given where I had come from on the subject.  I walked that hallway a FEW times before I could convince myself that such a thing was even possible. I eventually decided I would have to make myself believe it was possible, and for a long time I believed and prayed that Jenna would be able to return to her former life.

I do have to note that if it wasn’t for the possibility-of-whole-recovery thing to begin with, I may not have been able to make it at all. And where Jenna is right now is not all that bad, recovery wise. She is happy, so I should be too.

Nevertheless, in my darker moments, I blame myself for so much of this. I blame myself for ever entering Jenna’s life to begin with, etc. I wont make a list because I am trying to move beyond it all. If I persist with it, and with trying to be so entwined with Jenna’s recovery on a daily basis, I am going to end up in a rubber room, or a morgue.  At least until I can get my own emotional soup cleared up, I just have to step back from the Jenna war room mentality I’ve kept up for the past four years.

I used to try to be as honest with Jenna as possible, including telling her the truth about my own mental status. Big mistake. I need to get some distance from all of this. For my own survival. I have been wallowing in the gap between where I want Jenna to be and in the reality of where Jenna is going to be, and it is just not working. Now its been a frickin YEAR in the hellabama house. When I dropped Jenna off with her parents in Indiana last summer, I was a weeping wreck. A year later, I am still a weeping wreck. I have had conversations about “keeping” Jenna, aka whether to completely cut her off, with her dad, wondering whether I have the ability any more to deal with it all. God knows I tried, but clearly I do not.  I have no intention of cutting her off entirely, I just need to step back a little bit.

I will still stay in Jenna’s life, take her many calls, but I am going to try to detach spiritually and emotionally from the impossible goal stated in this website’s URL. Jenna is happy, content, and functioning as best she can in her current situation, and I need to be happy with that, just that, and not be a Sisyphusian mess.

The library is closing right now (actually now im in the parking lot doing a revision) so I will try to articulate more of what I’m talking about at another time.